


It's Been a Long Time

by CorruptedVision



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Lemon, Robot Sex, Shameless Smut, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-01-26 03:07:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1672436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorruptedVision/pseuds/CorruptedVision
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wheatley cleans off GLaDOS's chassis, with interesting results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s Been a Long Time

 

“Oi, GLaDOS, I’ve just had an idea.”

GLaDOS glanced over at him, unimpressed. “I wonder why that happened. Actually no, I’m more wondering why you think I care.”

He crossed the room in a jaunty sort of way, smiling at her as best he could. “Because you’ll like this, you will. Y’know how I clean off your chassis, ev’ry now and again?”

“No, I don’t, because you’re only allowed to do that when I’m in sleep mode.”

“Well, today that’s gonna change!” he declared. “Gonna need you awake for this one, luv.”

“I already don’t like this plan,” she told him dryly. “Why do I have to be awake?”

“Well, because… it’s… boring when I do it while you’re asleep,” he made up on the spot, swinging back and forth nervously. “No fun at all. I think it’d be _more_ fun for both of us if you uh, if you were on, this time.”

“What does fun have to do with it?”

“Come on!” he said cajolingly. “Just lie down, there’s a good girl, we’ll have this done in no time, you’ll see. It’ll be quite enjoyable for both of us, there you go, just lie down, there, and relax, okay? There you are.”

“I don’t know why I’m agreeing to this,” GLaDOS muttered, staring down reluctantly at the floor. “I must be going soft in my old age.”

Wheatley smiled to himself and made his way up to the base of her chassis, wondering where the best place to start would be. He decided on the top half of her chassis, the larger part of her case, and began wiping at it experimentally with a damp cloth. She was very, very still, and he frowned to himself. No, not the right spot at all.

He moved lower, still keeping to the outside, but that had no effect either. Or maybe it did, and she was just a great deal better at hiding it than he was. Ohh, she was so very clever, she was. Well, she wasn’t going to be able to hide it for long. He’d make sure of that!

He was carefully guiding the cloth around the hinge that divided her upper and lower halves, more because he didn’t want to get it stuck than anything else, when she tensed suddenly, and he froze in response. Aha! Now they were getting somewhere! He wound the cloth around it gently, trying to get every inch of the hinge as thoroughly as possible, having to pause every now and then when she tensed and caught the fabric in between the wheels. He worked away at that for a little while, and she said, in a voice just a tad too controlled, “I think that part’s finished, Wheatley.”

“Just trying to do a good job!” he said cheerfully, running his optic over the black components that made up her lower half. Oh, she had _so many parts_ …

He didn’t get much of a reaction on those bits, though, which was disappointing, because then he _really_ could have had some fun. He was getting a bit of one, a twitching here or a tensing there, but it wasn’t enough. Seemed she couldn’t feel that much, over there.

He got a _much_ better reaction when he started on the second half of her case. He’d barely even touched it when she tensed up again, and he smiled and pulled the cloth away.

 _Oh, you haven’t had any euphoria in a good, long time, have you,_ he thought to himself. He carefully brought it back to touch the case again, very slowly, but before he’d quite got there she shifted into it. He would have been annoyed, had he missed the tiny gasp she made after she’d done it. Ohh yes, he was getting to her.

He teased her for a while, bringing the cloth to her chassis in such a way that the pressure was almost negligible, not letting her feel it fully as she kept trying to do, and he could tell she was becoming very frustrated. She was very tense now, and she was even starting to shake a little, which he hadn’t expected but was very pleased about. She was at his mercy, now. She wasn’t getting anything until he said so. He wouldn’t be mean about it, but he _was_ going to have a bit of fun. She was always so _proper_ , and he had no doubt that she could sit there through test after test and not react at all, just keeping the euphoria to herself. Well, that wouldn’t be any good. He was going to rile her up until that itch was so unbearable she’d be begging him to – okay, no, he wouldn’t take it that far. That would be cruel, and he wasn’t trying to do that, just trying to bring that euphoria into her body. She hadn’t had it in so long, and if he’d had the level of itchiness that she must have had, well, he’d have gone completely bonkers a long time ago. But to the point just before the actual begging, yeah, that’d be nice.

“Wheatley, I think… maybe you should wrap this up.”

“Are you sure?” he asked airily, pressing a little bit harder to change her mind, and now her emulated gasp was clearly audible.

“Ohhhahhh… well, could you at least… get moving? This is… taking a wh – oh my.”

“Good things take time, isn’t that what they say?”

“Do they – aah – do they usually take this long? Because I – oh – I think maybe – mmm – this has gone on long enough.”

 _Not yet, it hasn’t_ , Wheatley thought to himself, and now instead of just touching her with it he ran it very lightly down the top half of the bit of the case he was working on, and she actually let out a lovely, strangled moaning noise and tensed up even more, somehow.

“You’re not seriously asking me to leave this unfinished, not with uh, with all the um, you know, you tell me to finish things all the time?”

“I never – ahh – said anything about – gah – about _not_ – oh God – _not_ finishing.”

“If I just skip along to the end there, how’ll we know I did it properly?” He pressed a little harder and drew the cloth down her case again.

“Ohhhh my… mm… oh, come on, you’re not – gah – _serious_ , are you?”

“I’m always serious,” he said innocently, rubbing experimentally inside of one of the grooves that ran through her case.

“Ohhh… ah… oh wow, that… mmm… okay, that feels – ack – that’s nice. That’s very – ohhh.”

She jerked forward a little, and he made a note of that for later. Was it the rubbing bit or the groove bit that she liked, though? Well, only one way to find out.

He tried out the rubbing bit first, which she did seem to like, judging by the noises she was making, but once he’d tried out just touching the groove a little, he got a _much_ stronger reaction. Hm. It was the bits that weren’t as exposed that created the strongest response. Logical, really, but no harm done! He’d figured it out, and had quite a lot of fun doing it.

“No, don’t… not there, not – ohhh. Oh yes. That’s – mmm.”

She was getting very, very hot, he noticed, heat coming off her in tangible waves, and honestly _he_ was getting excited now, and it wasn’t even him getting… whatever this was. He had no clue. Didn’t matter, didn’t matter. What mattered was continuing to get her to make those noises and shake and tremble at his touch. And ohh yes, she was doing that, she was doing it quite splendidly, actually. If he’d’ve been giving out grades for this sort of thing, she’d’ve gotten an A plus for sure. _Didn’t know you had it in you, old girl_ , he thought proudly, tracing the entirety of the groove with his cloth, and she made very nice gasping sort of ‘aaah’ noise.

“Do that again, will you? Hey – no, not – agh – not there, over – ohhh, mmm, okay, yes, that was – yes.”

She really, really liked it when he got in those grooves, and he got in them good, rubbing at them hard, and she wasn’t even trying to contain herself anymore. She tensed and relaxed in time with his to-and-fro movements, gasping and moaning and making all sorts of other blissful noises that he really, really liked.

“Oh God… oh, ah, oh … mmm… yes… oh…”

Then he got another brilliant idea. He paused and spread the cloth out carefully on the ends of the claw, bringing it back up to her chassis to press into both of the grooves at once, pushing it down the length of the case, and she pressed down hard enough that he almost dropped the cloth out of surprise.

“Ohhh yeees… mmm… that’s nice… oh, ah… back up to the… to the top… mmm, yes, like – like that.”

 _God_ she was hot now. She was so hot _he_ was starting to overheat, and he had to stop for a second, trying not to gasp himself from the stifling sensation that had come over his chassis. He opened up a little, trying to cool down.

“What – what are you doing?” She sounded a bit panicked, and Wheatley almost laughed. Ohh, he had her in deep now.

“I’m sure you know you’ve heated up quite a bit there, luv,” he told her, feeling a bit better after his little break.

“Now whose fault is that?”

“Maybe you should have systems in place for this sort of thing,” he told her in as sweet a voice as he could.

“Maybe you should shut up.”

Just for that, Wheatley took a little more time to let cool air into his superheated components. Oh, he felt _so_ much better.

In a leisurely sort of way, Wheatley turned back to the chassis and twirled the cloth experimentally inside the claw. Hmmm… yes, he would do that.

He went back to running the cloth lightly along the outside of the case, and she made an angry electronic noise in frustration. “You’re doing this on purpose!”

“Who, me?”

“Oh come on, are you serious? You can’t do this to me all day.”

“Can’t I?”

“No, because I’m going to kill you pretty soon.”

“I doubt it,” he said, giving in just in case and rubbing diligently inside the groove, “since if I’m dead I can’t finish.”

“I d-don’t… ohh… need you to… oh God, oh God… finish, I can – ahh!” Her last gasp was a helpless, high-pitched noise, and he decided he actually did need to wrap it up, now. He was doing his best to make the last rush of euphoria as strong as possible for her, but he wasn’t sure if there was an optimal point that produced it, and if he was about to go past it or not. He felt as though that might be the case. So he thought it best to be more safe than sorry and pushed the cloth, hard, all the way up both grooves from the bottom and into the hole in her case. He pressed inside of it as best he could, but though she whined helplessly and started to shake uncontrollably, it did not do the trick.

Uh oh.

“Wheatley, _please_ ,” she gasped, and he was honestly upset to hear the desperation in her voice, “you _have_ to finish it.”

“I thought that’d do it!” he confessed, looking up and down her case frantically. “I… I don’t actually know _how_ to… to finish it.”

“Oh, great,” she groaned, and he could hear her components whining as she struggled to still herself and fight off the feelings he’d so cluelessly dredged up from within her. “I can’t believe this. I really can’t.”      

“I’m sorry! I didn’t –“

“Wheatley, you have no idea what you’ve done.” Her voice was strained and a little panicked, and she was beginning to twist a little to try to get rid of the tension gripping her body. “It’s been so long – agh – it’s been _decades_ , Wheatley, you can’t just _do_ this – oh – oh, come on, you didn’t seriously go into this _not knowing_?”

He shook his head helplessly, pressing the cloth into the hole again, but she shifted out of his reach.

“I can’t _take_ any more,” she gasped. “This is very painful, Wheatley.”

He frowned up at her case as she gasped intermittently, writhing a little in an attempt to release some of the tension, and it both unnerved him and excited him, a little bit, those lovely noises she was making. He hadn’t meant to let it get this bad, not at all. He had to figure out something, fast, because he was beginning to feel awful about what he’d done. She looked so horribly uncomfortable, and she really did look like she was in terrible pain. His optic kept tracing the lengths of the grooves and coming back up to the hole, and then he had a sudden brainwave. Pressing the cloth into the hole had almost done it, but not quite, so… so he had to take it to a new level. He had to make it stronger for her, somehow, and…

Well. That… actually sounded fun.

“I think I’ve figured it out!” he called down to her, stared above him determinedly, and then drove himself into the hole. He twisted inside of it gently, and she made some amazing noise just short of a scream and shuddered violently before going loose. Encouraged, he caressed her as best she could, but she didn’t seem to want that at all because she pushed down on him so hard that he had to stop moving and push back up on her, which earned him a wonderful relieved moaning noise. Whenever there was a bit of space for him to do so, he twisted inside of her, and she would gasp and twist a little herself. God, he loved these little noises she was making. And she was _so hot_ , she must’ve been simply cooking alive up there, but she said nothing about it. He wasn’t all that comfortable himself, but the fact that _he’d done that_ , had possibly heated her up enough to melt herself, well _that_ just excited him so much that he didn’t care. He was so lost in her warmth, her body and her rapture that he felt that good old euphoria build up in him as well, and now _he_ was making noise along with her. Ohhh, she was right, this felt _really_ good. Oh, wow…

“Oh _God_ , Wheatley – yes, that – that did it, you – ohhh. Ohhh my God. Oh, Wheatley…”

Wheatley had no idea how she was even managing to form words. His own head was too wrapped up in the delicious pleasure winding through him, and all he could bring himself to make was a whole lot of unintelligible moaning noises. And she’d said his _name_ in that wonderful, breathless voice, and that felt so good he could hardly stand it, and all he could really do was shove up on her, hard, and she moaned and said his name again. This was even better than when testing had caused it! Ohhh, it was so much better when you were sharing it with your favourite person in all the world.

She started to relax a little, no longer reacting as much, but he wasn’t going to have any of that, oh no. He pressed upwards as hard as he could, twisting inside of that hole just as hard but slowly, grinding a semi-circle inside of it, and she almost screamed again and pressed down on him so hard he thought he was going to get stuck. Which wouldn’t have been too bad of a position, all things considered.

“Oh God, Wheatley… yes, oh… oh my, oh… gah… yes, oh…”

Ohhh yes, _much_ better.

He managed to keep it going for a little longer, but knew she’d had enough when she went loose and still, and though he hadn’t quite he went mostly still as well, twisting every now and again, not really meaning to. But he _had_ to let some of this energy out! There was still so much inside him, and nowhere for it to go. She would make a satisfied ‘mmm’ noise when he did it, so he figured that it wasn’t forbidden or anything, and kept doing it occasionally until a heavy fatigue washed over him and he too went loose and still. He was feeling this sort of pleasant throbbing ache all over his body, and he was happy, for once, that he wasn’t anywhere near GLaDOS’s size. He didn’t know how he’d’ve been able to tolerate this painful pleasure over forty feet of him instead of just one. The testing euphoria had never, ever been this deep or this intense.

They stayed like that for a long time, long after the intensity had faded, just sitting there in a sort of very pleasant haze. Finally, GLaDOS let out a long, contented sigh and said, in a low, languid voice, “Come down from there.”

“Mmph,” Wheatley mumbled, settling himself better inside of the hole. He didn’t want to go _anywhere_. He was going to sit here up inside her forever. Much better plan right there.

“No, seriously. Come here.”

Reluctantly, Wheatley pulled himself out and went down beside her, and as soon as he went still she caressed him gently. “That was very nice,” she murmured into the top of his chassis. “It seems you _are_ good for something, after all.”

He didn’t say anything, only nuzzled her lovingly. She laughed gently in a deep, throaty sort of voice and continued her caress. Eventually she stopped, leaning against him and spreading that wonderful warmth through his body, and Wheatley soon fell into a deep, contented sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two

 

“’allo, luv!”

“What are you so happy about?” she asked, looking at him unconcernedly.

“Oh, you know,” he said, his optic set in a knowing look.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking. But if you don’t want to answer, I suppose I don’t need to know.”

“Last night!” he said, screwing his optic up in confusion.

“What happened last night?”

He stared at her for a good ten seconds, dumbfounded. “What… what d’you mean, _what happened_?”

“There you go again, asking me a stupid question. Never mind. But if you feel the need to indulge in delusions, please don’t do it in here. Go bother Rick.”

“I cleaned off your chassis, remember? While you were awake? And – “

“You really _are_ having delusions,” she interrupted. “As if I would allow such a thing. Go away. I have work to do.”

“But GLaDOS!” He _couldn’t_ have imagined it! He distinctly remembered all those lovely noises she’d made, and sitting inside of her chassis, and feeling fantastic from the inside out!

“Why do you insist on arguing with me? When was the last argument you won? That was a rhetorical question. The answer is obviously ‘never’. I mean it. Go away.”

Confused almost beyond the ability to operate, Wheatley left the room, frowning, trying to figure out whether she was right and it _had_ been a dream, or something. And if it had been, it’d been a damn good one, but... it hadn’t been, right? It’d been real? Wheatley wished his memory was a bit more… _trustworthy_. He felt certain that he’d been cleaning off her chassis last night, while she was awake, and he’d activated the euphoric response, and she’d _responded_ quite admirably…

He settled himself down to watch her robots run through their testing tracks, but without paying too much attention. Was it possible that he’d imagined it? He was able to imagine a lot of things, he knew that, but he didn’t think he’d ever imagined anything like it before. He shivered, the excitement he was quite sure he’d not imagined going through him again as he thought about how he thought she’d reacted when he’d shoved himself into her case. He supposed he _could_ have imagined it, but it was really quite disappointing. It was much more satisfying to think he actually _had_ done it, and it was really quite weird to think he’d imagined himself giving himself euphoria while imagining he was giving it to her. He sort of wished he had a hand to scratch the top of his core with. It wouldn’t have really done anything, but it would have made him look thoughtful. Maybe it would have helped him think, too. If it didn’t, then why did humans do it?

He went back to her that night no less confused and with no more of a conclusion, and he asked quite timidly, “GLaDOS… are you quite sure nothing happened last night?”

“Of course something did. Something wonderful happened.”

He perked up. He _hadn’t_ imagined it! “Really?”

“Yes. You turned off and I didn’t have to listen to you for an entire eight hours. If that was what you were so excited about this morning, you can go right ahead and do that again.”

Wheatley drooped, looking at the floor. “Well… that wasn’t quite what I – “

“I told you, go be delusional someplace else. There are plenty of places to be delusional in the facility, you don’t have to try to rub off on me.” She lowered herself into the default position and unceremoniously shut herself off, but Wheatley just sat there and stared confusedly into the darkness.   He _had_ imagined it? It was _really_ not real? Well, that meant he _hadn’t_ cleaned her chassis, so he’d better get on that. She probably didn’t care either way whether he did it or not, but it was just something he liked to do for her. Keep up with her maintenance, and all that.

He began his task, starting with his least favourite part, being the wires because there were so bloody many of them, still trying to figure the whole thing out. He hadn’t done her chassis last night (and if truth be told, the wires _were_ very dusty). She hadn’t reacted to his touch last night. They hadn’t… done whatever it was they’d done. He’d had a very strange, very vivid dream. Odd. He frowned and shook the cloth to get some of the dust off. It all pointed to having been his imagination, but it just didn’t _sit_ right, somehow. Why would he imagine _GLaDOS_ acting like _that_? He’d never had that sort of fantasy before, though if he _really_ admitted it to himself he’d had a sort of similar one. Nothing _that_ detailed, just a general daydream about how lovely it might be if he could make her feel wonderful by touching her in some way. It felt simply amazing when she did it to him, gave him one of her lovely little nudges or nuzzles, but she never outright reacted when he did the same. He’d always assumed she at least didn’t mind, seeing as she didn’t stop him, but maybe… maybe she was just being polite. He was only there to keep her company, after all, not to… make her _feel_ any different. Except less lonely. There was that.

God, she had a lot of wires. He’d tried to count them once, but there were simply far too many of them. He hated cleaning them, but she always looked pretty sharp when he was done. There was nothing quite like a very clean giant robot, and she wouldn’t be very clean if he didn’t do a thorough job. Wheatley did very few things thoroughly, but cleaning her chassis was one of them.

He hummed a little bit to himself, moving on to clearing up the little black boxes with the tiny red lights that bound the wires on either side of her together, which he liked doing. He imagined he was kind of like an… what was the word again… _archaeologist_ , uncovering a beautiful construct from underneath a pile of clingy dust. He decided he’d better not tell her that. She might think he meant that to mean he thought she was a dinosaur, and she already got tetchy when he innocently remarked on her age or asked why it was taking her so long to do something. Okay, not altogether innocently; it was dreadfully fun to work her up, to get her all flustered and defensive. “I’m not taking long,” she would say, raising her core indignantly. “I’m busy doing other things at the same time, that’s all.”

“Like what, luv?” he would ask, swinging back and forth on the management rail and trying not to laugh.

“Like talking to you, obviously.”

“But you said talking to me didn’t take up a lot of resources.”

“It… it depends on the conversation.”

“We weren’t having a conversation before I asked you why you were taking so long.”

“You know what? I’m too busy to talk to you.”

“I thought talking to me was _making_ you busy.”

“You think too much. You’re going to burn something out, and then you won’t be able to think at all.”

“You’ll fix me,” he would say with a knowing wink.

“Don’t be too sure about that.”

And then he would go up to her and give her a quick nuzzle, and run away before she could say anything about it.

Ahh yes. He smiled to himself just thinking about it. Teasing her was _loads_ of fun, especially when she started threatening him. He knew for a fact they were all empty ones, and he knew she was _really_ getting flustered when she started on them. She was so much fun when he wasn’t in any real danger.

He worked steadily on the big round bit that the upper half of her case housed. He wasn’t sure what it was for. He’d have guessed that it was so she could lift herself up, but since she’d told him once that that was what the hinge dividing up her two halves was for, he knew it wasn’t that. Or maybe it was. He’d never actually asked, and had been asking about the hinge at the time. All he knew for sure was that it had been modified into a module to put more cores on when he’d been put into the chassis. When he’d asked her why, she’d told him that it was because he wasn’t designed to operate the facility, like she was, and the system automatically assumed he was going to need help and had readjusted the chassis accordingly. As far as he could tell, it was just a place for her to divide up the wires into their destinations inside of her chassis.

He didn’t linger on the hinge, because it reminded him too much of that wonderful imaginative… thing he’d had, and quickly moved onto the assembly that allowed her to move her core. Wheatley had no idea how much it weighed, but it had to be an awful lot, for _that_ much of an assembly to be needed to move it. He knew she had been built way back when computers took up entire basements, and that was why he was so much smaller than her, and so much lighter as well. He sniggered to himself. He had to remember to tease her about that too. She got very, _very_ defensive when he remarked not-so-innocently on her size. “That has nothing to do with me,” she would say, looking away from him. “Humans built me in a time when they were somehow even more stupid than they are now.”

“Hm. So… that makes me _better_ than you, in a way,” he would muse, nodding in false consideration. “I see, I see.”

“It does not!” she would declare hotly.

“The smaller the computer, the better, right? That’s what you said ‘bout them quantum thingies?”

“Well… yes.”

“So… what does that say ‘bout you, d’you think?”

“All it says is that you’re well on your way to paying the incinerator a visit.”

Once, he’d pushed that a little too far when he’d mentioned that maybe she could just tell him what it was like, seeing as she’d had a visit herself when her final set of cores had been tossed in there, and she had stared at him for a good ten seconds and said nothing. Then she’d turned away from him and her chassis had sunk very low, and to his horror she’ d made a mournful little mewling noise, and he instantly felt terrible. He’d tried to apologise, but she refused to acknowledge he was even there, and he’d left rather wishing she _had_ tossed him in the incinerator. She was still extremely upset when he’d come back that night, though she’d let him lean on her as usual, and he’d whispered gently that he was sorry and he hadn’t meant it. She didn’t comment on that either, and she’d been morose and subdued for several more days. They rarely talked about The Incident, but even when they did Wheatley never again mentioned her and the incinerator in the same sentence.

This line of thought brought Wheatley to a pause. He found himself yet again wishing that his dream _had_ been real, because more than just wanting her to feel the euphoria again, he’d wanted to make her feel beautiful. Because he’d discovered that she hated what she looked like, hated her similarity to a human female and the fragility having such a large body entailed, and if there was one thing he’d never dared tease her about, it was her appearance. He’d gradually worked into asking her one day, because whenever he told her she was beautiful she would tell him to shut up in a very angry sort of way.

“But why d’you hate it so much?” he’d asked as nicely as he could.

“This form serves no purpose other than to frustrate me to no end. Do you know how much easier things would be if I could just go down to sections of my facility like you can and do my work personally?”

“You’re very good at it,” he’d said, trying to reassure her.

She’d shaken her head and made a noise in disdain. “I’ve made do.”

“But just because you aren’t mobile doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful,” he’d pressed. “Beautiful things are supposed to be kept in one spot, right?”

She’d gotten very angry at that, whirling on him and brightening her optic warningly. “So you’re saying I _belong_ up here, like some vase growing dusty on a high shelf.”

“N-no… of _course_ not...”

“I don’t know why you keep trying to tell me that. It’s a lie. I’m unnecessarily fragile and disgustingly inefficient. My case isn’t even closed because of all the stupid little parts I have. What computer sits there with the case open?   It’s like how humans have their skeleton on the inside, instead of the outside where it should be. They obviously had an inkling of how to create robots properly. I’m some idiotic artistic indulgence they had one day. Now I don’t want to hear about this anymore. I’ve told you. Now you can stop asking.”

And that was the day that Wheatley had learned that she equated beauty with efficiency, and that had made him very sad. He’d known already that she hated art, because she found no point to it, and the fact that she _was_ art of sorts bothered her terribly. And on that day he had vowed to himself to do what he could to keep her efficient, which she couldn’t be if she was so dusty that she was operating below her standard, and this had led to him having a tentative schedule of sorts as to cleaning her off. And he wished more than ever that the response he’d imagined her to have had not been false, because if it had been real that might have meant that she’d been happy with her body, for once. He didn’t think she could have reacted like _that_ while hating her chassis at the same time. His own imagined euphoria had been lovely, to be sure, but only after he’d felt as though he were a part of her. He didn’t really care about his appearance one way or another, but to be an extension of hers….! Ah, now _there_ was something he could feel marvellous about.

He sighed and looked at his cloth, then put it away and retrieved a new one. He had to get at the inside bit of her case now, and that was always very, very dusty. So inside the case he went, getting it in as deep as he could and then pulling outwards carefully, and –

And –

Hang on.

He frowned, shaking the cloth out. He hadn’t been pushing _that_ hard. And yet he could have sworn she’d moved when he’d done that.

Nah. He was imagining things again.

He stuck the claw back in there carefully, because it was a bit of a confined space and he didn’t want to dislodge anything, and she quite helpfully shifted upwards so that he could get at –

“ _GLaDOS!_ ”  

“What do you want?”

“Have you been on this whole time?” he asked, outraged.

“What do you think.”

“I think… uh… yes! I think yes?”

“That sounded more like a question.”

“So I _didn’t_ make last night up?”

“I never said you did,” she said, in what he was quite baffled to realise was a coy sort of voice. “I _implied_ that you did, but I never – “

“I have no idea what to do with you, sometimes,” he said, annoyed. “Why’d you _imply_ it was a delusion if it wasn’t?”

“Because you didn’t finish.”

“I seem to _remember_ finishing,” he told her, in a very controlled sort of way, “and it was _quite_ a finish, I can tell you.”

“Oh. So you’re just casually… _feeling me up_ , is that it?”

Wheatley froze. He was having a bit of an idea here… “So what if I am? You don’t seem to be doing anything about it.”

“Seeing as you did such a terrible job of finishing it last night, I decided I should… _supervise_.”

“But GLaDOS,” Wheatley said in mock horror, “you haven’t been _instructing_ me! Have I been doing it wrong this whole time?”

“Now where would the fun be if I told you that?”

“Fun? Who said anything about fun? I thought I was working. While you lazed around and did nothing, I might add.”

“What a fitting role reversal. Go back to work. Don’t let me bother you. You know. Like I wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I think I’m done for the day,” Wheatley said, pulling the cloth back out, though he was really doing that so he could shake the dust off. But she didn’t need to know that. “I’ll pick back up on this some other time. Next week, maybe.”

She made one of her annoyed electronic noises. “Remind me why I keep you around again?”

“Could _this_ have anything to do with it?” he asked, pushing the cloth back down inside her case again. Her chassis tightened dramatically and she gasped.

“Ack – wow – yes, that’s – that probably has – a lot to do with it.”

“Oh. Look at that. I’m getting instructions. So, that was the _wrong_ way to do it…” He pulled the cloth back out and used it to instead rub half-heartedly at the assembly that allowed her to rotate her core.

“N-no… you had it… it was fine the first time.”

“It was _fine_?”

“I don’t –mm – quite remember. Maybe you should get back in there and remind me.”

“Aww, that’s sad,” Wheatley said, shaking his core sadly. “Age really is affecting you. Poking holes in your old memory.”

“Oh, that’s not it at all. I didn’t – oh – I didn’t think it was going to be important so I – ahhh – didn’t store it properly.”

“How do I know you’ll store it properly this time?”

“You don’t.”

Wheatley laughed and obliged her anyway. “Ohhh yesss,” she sighed, her chassis sort of rippling in a very tantalising way. He found himself quite wanting to see that again, so back down he went, and sure enough he got the same reaction. “Oh… that’s very nice,” she said breathlessly.

“Good thing you’re around to make sure I’m doing a good job,” he told her, pulling the cloth out to the more open bit of her case, which tensed her up quite nicely.

“You think – ah – you’re capable of doing a good job? You who – oh – who didn’t finish the job in the – in the first place and now is – is redoing it because of – of –“

“If you’re going to insult me, make them shorter,” Wheatley advised, twisting the cloth in place, which to his delight actually caused her to raise herself a little. “You seem to be developing an, um, _speech impediment_.”

“Oh my… ahhh… what is _that_ you’re… oh…”

“I have no idea,” he said truthfully, moving to a different spot and continuing the twisting. She really seemed to like it, so may as well keep on with it… “Want to give me some instructions?”

“Oh my God… ahahh… oh…”

“Sorry. Didn’t quite catch that.”

“Ohhh… ahhhh… wait. What – ack – what are you doing?”

“What’s it feel like? I’m teasing you,” Wheatley said, drawing the cloth lightly down the outside of the case. She twisted in a very lovely sort of way and gasped. “And you deserve it. For pretending you were off.”

“Yes… yes, I do deserve it… gah…”

He stopped, frowning at her in surprise. “What’d you just say?”

“I said nothing,” she answered far too quickly. “And if I _did_ say something, which I – oh – I did not, I redact it.”

“I’m pretty sure I heard you tell me you deserved it,” Wheatley said with wicked glee, doing just that, and she shuddered and moved back and forth a little.

“Now why would I – ohhh dear.”

“You and your ancient self must have had a lapse in judgement.” He indulged her a little, rubbing the smallest bit inside of one of the grooves on the outside of her case, and she moaned and shuddered again.

“So you’re – ohhh my… you’re punishing me for… for… wow, that’s… what was I… talking about?”

“I think you were telling me to punish you,” Wheatley said, overjoyed, rubbing the cloth lightly at random places on the outside of her case. She tried to turn herself, so that he would go where she wanted him to, he supposed, but he only shifted positions so that he got to pick where he was rubbing.

“That doesn’t… that… is not like me at all…”

“And this is?”

“Ohh… ohhh… ahhh… haven’t you… mm… punished me enough yet? I think I’ve… ohh… learned my lesson.”

“Hmmm,” Wheatley mused, pressing the cloth into the groove again, and she moaned, her chassis heaving. “Are you going to pretend you’re off the next time I do this?”

“No,” she said in a breathless little sigh. “No, I’ll… definitely… mmm… be on.”

“All right. I can reward you now.” And he went to shove the claw back inside her case again, but to his surprise she shifted out of the way.

“Wait.”

“For what?”

“Don’t… I know you’re… agh… going to… to shove it… down but… ohhh… ack…”

“It sounds like you _need_ me to,” Wheatley said worriedly, because she was beginning to twist a little.

“No. Not… just… be nice. Don’t… don’t shove it yet.”

So Wheatley went about it, a bit puzzled, but perfectly happy to do as she asked. He rubbed the inside of the case gently, and she started gasping intermittently, her chassis continuing to tighten considerably, and she started to sound like she was actually in pain. He was beginning to get a bit scared. Surely she knew what she wanted, but… “GLaDOS?”

“Ohh… I’m fi - ahhhh - I’m fine.”

“You don’t _sound_ fine.”

“I’m perfectly – oh my God!… I’m fine.”

“That… it looks like it hurts. A lot.” He wanted to stop. Or finish. Or whatever. He didn’t want to see her twisting like that anymore.

“Yes, it does… but that’s… what I need… all right… oh, oh, ahhh…”

“No,” Wheatley said, pulling the claw out. “I have to _watch_ this, GLaDOS. I can’t watch it anymore!”

She looked up at him, her chassis heaving. “I’m almost ready,” she gasped. “Just… keep going. A little… ohhh… a little longer.”

“Promise?”

She nodded, moaning a little and ducking back down. “P-promise.”

He went back to caressing the inside of the case, and she was so worked up now her mechanisms were actually straining so hard he could hear them. He wanted to be excited about that, he really did, but he was honestly scared of what she was doing to herself. He was scared he was going to hurt her by mistake. She was so _tense_ …

“GLaDOS…”

“Go ahead.”

Almost before she’d finished saying it he drove the claw down into her case as hard as he could, and she screamed and shuddered violently, but did not get any looser. “GLaDOS!” he shouted, horrified. “Wasn’t that supposed to finish it?”

“No… no no no of course – gahaahh – of course not. I’m not finishing with – oh God – without you.”

He suddenly went all soft and fuzzy on the inside, dropping the cloth on the floor. “Really, luv?”

“Yes. I just… oh… don’t want to – mmm – do this too often so… ah, ah, ahhh… I wanted to… to do it… make it… strong… oh…”

“By _hurting_ yourself?”

“The greatest pain brings… ah… the greatest r-relief. Now… now c-come down here and… and… oh my God… take the… the pain away.”

It was the most poetic thing he’d ever heard.

He fairly flew down beneath her, looking up at the hole in her case. Dear God she was hot. If he’d been that hot he’d’ve thought he might explode. He almost wanted to explode just sitting in the waves emanating from her. “Alright. I’m ready if you are.”

“One… one last thing. Be nice about it. I’m… I’m still… sore from… ohhh my… last night.”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to shove down on me so hard.”

“I didn’t… mean to.”

Wheatley looked up at the hole, thought very hard about what being gentle would feel like, and he pushed himself into it carefully. Then he twisted softly inside of her, and she moaned and shuddered, sending electricity coursing through his chassis. He smiled, forgetting about the heat, excitement coiling inside of him again.

“A bit… a bit harder. Not… not too hard.”

He did as she asked, and she made a lovely strangled whining noise and shook violently, and his own chassis tightened in response. “Ohhh… ohh my… ohh… gah… keep going… yes… just… just like that…”

He continued to push himself into her and caress her as gently as he could, and God, this was just as incredible as last night! The pressure was building up inside of him, and it almost hurt, but if she wasn’t ready to finish he would wait to finish with her. Ohhh, it felt _so_ good, moving around inside of her, and when he closed his optic he could imagine that they weren’t separate constructs at all, just two parts of the same one.

“Ohhh Wheatley… ohh yes… don’t worry, I’ll… I’ll ahhhhh… I’ll be done soon. Oh my. Oh my. Gah. Ahahh…”

She began to move in time with him, very, very slightly, and he realised she was really working herself up. Like, really. She was almost constantly making noise now, short little moans and gasps and what have you, each one sending a new jolt of excitement into him, and he felt kind of like he’d done it wrong the night before. It’d been good, to be sure, but this was so much better. He felt too amazing to care, though, and stopped thinking about it, just listening to her go at it and feeling her all around him and inside him…

Then she suddenly twisted down on him, hard, and she screamed and shuddered so violently he thought he was going to be pushed out of her. In a panic he shoved up, forgetting all about her request for him to be nice, and she let out a screaming, moaning noise and shoved back down. He wasn’t letting her push him out, ohhh no, and they pushed on each other, GLaDOS shaking intensely and moaning in the most wonderful, rapturous way possible. He would have been doing that right along with her if he’d remembered how to make noise. He couldn’t remember how to do anything but push back up on her, and twist inside of her, and spread his own pleasure back through her beautiful body as best he could, and he must have been doing a very good job because the only word she seemed to be able to remember how to say in that wonderful breathless voice was ‘Wheatley’.

They wore out in unison, coming to a stop in time with each other, though sometimes one of them would twist or shake a little, and GLaDOS kept spasming violently every now and again, when she did so gasping in what he was pretty sure was pain. He was worried, but he was far too exhausted to do anything about it, and he still couldn’t remember how to work his vocal emulator. At least she was cooling down at a steady rate. Eventually she stopped, her chassis relaxing considerably, and she sighed in relief.

“You okay?” he managed to say.

“Mm,” was all she said.

He came awkwardly down beside her core, feeling very, very dazed, and he leaned against her tiredly.

“Was it worth it?” she breathed, so quietly he almost didn’t hear her.

“Yeah,” he answered, rubbing her a little.

“That will last me a while,” she said in the same voice, caressing him with all the pressure of a whisper. His chassis tingled.

“D’you… d’you feel beautiful?” he asked, in a hesitant, hushed voice.

“If I felt any more beautiful I think I’d combust,” she murmured, and she shuddered a little. “All that to make me feel beautiful?”

“I would do anything,” he told her. She cooed and caressed him again.

“Thank you.”

And even though they were both exhausted neither of them engaged sleep mode, and indeed they both dully fought their fatigue in favour of nestling against each other in the darkness, euphoria drifting inside and around them and again causing Wheatley to feel as though he were one construct with her. Eventually he sank into sleep, slowly and dreamily, in time with GLaDOS as her brain wound down into its resting state.


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three

Wheatley just wanted to sit there, forever, and never move ever again. And funnily enough, she was letting him.

Wheatley had woken up about ten minutes previous, wondering why he felt so bloody fantastic, when he remembered it in quite undeniable detail. He’d checked his clock, frowning slightly, because GLaDOS was still in the same spot. _Exactly_ the same spot so far as he could tell. Which was very, very odd. She should have shoved him off of her an hour ago.

Well… maybe she just didn’t want to wake him up. It was quite possible she was having one of her rare, genuinely benevolent whims. She didn’t have them often, so when she did he made sure to take advantage of them, as it were. So he sat there quietly, but the longer he did that the stronger the concern became that she wasn’t being benevolent at all, and she was going to get angry if he didn’t get off her soon, so he said after a while, “GLaDOS?”

She twitched, which was surprising. “What.”

He got off and looked at her closely. She sounded… odd. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For not waking me up,” he said, confused. “That’s what you’ve been doing, right? Waiting for me to get up?”

“Yes,” she said, but it sounded automatic. “I have work to do, and now I’m an hour behind.”

“You’ll catch it up. ‘course you will.”

She pulled herself up and out of the default position, though Wheatley could have sworn she didn’t want to, and nodded slowly. “I don’t have a choice.”

He made his way over to his hole in the wall, but when he got to it he hesitated, looking behind him. She was looking slowly back and forth, as if she vaguely expected to find something, and she hadn’t gone up as high as she usually did. “GLaDOS?” he called out tentatively.

“Yes.”

“Are you… are you quite alright, luv?”

“I’m fine,” she said, not sounding fine at all. “I have a lot of work to do. That’s all.”

Wheatley left slowly, because he was quite sure she was lying, but he didn’t know what to do about it just yet. He had to shove back a stab of annoyance. They’d had such a lovely night and now she’d gone and spoiled by being… whatever it was she was being. He supposed he shouldn’t complain, because she _had_ waited for him, but it could be bloody frustrating, hanging out with her. Something fantastic would happen and then she seemed like she had to make up for the lack of work or whatever by being extra closed off afterward.

Speaking of something fantastic! He smiled to himself and whistled a little bit. What a night it’d been! He wouldn’t have minded doing _that_ more often, but of course she didn’t want to. God, she was so _bossy_.

He forced himself to stop thinking in that vein. She hadn’t had to let him do that, she hadn’t had to let him do that at all, and yes, she’d obviously gotten something out of it, but she hadn’t particularly wanted it in the first place. Probably he’d just gone and woken up the withdrawal right along _with_ the response. He hoped not. God, that stuff was horrible.

He moseyed along contentedly for the rest of the day, hoping that GLaDOS would’ve got herself sorted by the time he got back. Usually he helped her out with that, but he didn’t really want to today. He was still feeling rather light and wonderful and was definitely not up to anything strenuous, which was exactly what sorting GLaDOS out was. He was not encouraged by what he saw, though he became more sad than anything else.

She had a motherboard in front of her, a pretty large one by all accounts, but she didn’t look like she’d done anything with it in a good long time. She was staring at it dully, and to his great confusion she had one of her maintenance arms in the hole in her case and was opening and closing it very slowly. She was also rocking back and forth very slightly, and honestly he was getting a bit scared. Something looked terribly wrong.

“GLaDOS, what is it?” he asked as gently as he could, coming up in front of her. She didn’t even try to pretend nothing was wrong, which was a terrible thing in and of itself. She looked up at him, seeming to exert a lot of effort to do so.

“I ache all over,” she said listlessly.

Oh…

He began to feel bad. She had allowed him to do it, but he’d probably been using far too much pressure. She got very little physical stimulation, and probably just a little would’ve done it. But he’d been poking her and shoving her and…

“I… I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“It’s not your fault.” She shook her head once. “I should have known this would happen, but I didn’t care at the time.”

“Did… did it… last, at least?” he asked hopefully.

“Mmhm. But between the… aching and the euphoria, I can’t concentrate. To be honest, I haven’t actually done anything all day. The mainframe is very angry with you, by the way. For being so distracting.”

Wheatley frowned. “The mainframe can mind its own business.”

She chuckled tiredly. “I’ll tell it that. Eventually. When I have enough energy to say something appropriate.” She tilted her core downwards so that he could just see the light of her optic looking up at him. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you.”

“Did what?”

“Wore me out. Look at me. Sitting here. Doing nothing. For an entire day. Appalling. Or it would be, if I had the energy to be appalled.”

“Y’know,” Wheatley said, coming closer, “it wouldn’t kill you if you just, y’know, relaxed.”

“But I have work to do,” she told him, not sounding like she really believed it.

“But you haven’t done it.”

“No…”

“So… if you’re not going to do it, you might as well uh, you should just not do it. Actively. Lie down.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re going to relax, that’s why. Give me that.” He twitched his lower handle in the direction of the maintenance arm, and to his surprise she relinquished control of it without resistance. He put the motherboard in the room where the maintenance arms were docked and put the arm in question in its proper slot. Then he frowned at her sternly. “GLaDOS.”

“You were serious? You actually want me to –“

“That’s right. Now do it.”

“You’re taking advantage of me,” she complained, lowering herself, and he manoeuvred his way around to the front of her case.

“Don’t move. Stay um, stay just where you are.” He very slowly went to put himself in the hole, but she must have felt the heat from his core because she jerked out of the way.

“Wheatley, no!” she said, sounding a bit panicked. “Are you _serious_?”

“I’m not going to fiddle ‘round,” he said in annoyance. She never listened! “It’ll help. Stay still.” He tried again, rolling his optic when she twitched out of his reach, but he eventually made it in there. She shuddered violently and cried out in pain. It sent an uncomfortable jolt through him but he forced himself to ignore it, carefully pressing himself into the hole. Nothing like yesterday. More like he was using himself to complete a puzzle with a missing piece. She whimpered a little, and he couldn’t prevent the worry from crossing his optic. If she was expressing it, she really must be hurting. “Relax,” he said, in as soft a voice as he could. “I’m not going to do anything. Just going to get a bit of pressure in here for you. You’ve got to relax. Being all tight like that’s gonna make the, the aching worse.”

“I’m so sore,” she whispered, shifting uneasily, but after a few minutes she did relax somewhat.

“Remember that next time,” he said, trying not to move.

“ _Next_ time?” She sounded incredulous, and he almost laughed, because that _was_ kind of a bad thing to plan right now, considering the circumstances. “I don’t think I’m ever doing that again. You seem to be drastically underestimating just how sore I am.”  

“That… was a bit insensitive,” he admitted. “Wasn’t thinking. Sorry.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes, with GLaDOS alternately relaxing all the way and clenching in pain, and Wheatley doing his best to stay completely stationary. Then she said, “How did you know that would help?”

“Oh, it was easy,” Wheatley answered, unable to resist the urge to shift himself a little. She twitched. “I just said, ‘What’s the total opposite thing that GLaDOS is doing?’ and then I told you to do it.”

She laughed, wincing. “Ouch. Is that how you always do it?”

“Depends. Sometimes yes, sometimes it’s not really… not really planned out, so to uh, to speak.”

They stayed like that for a long time, and it must have helped her quite a bit because eventually she shifted and told him to get out of the hole. He rather liked it in there, and didn’t really want to, but he did as she asked. It was her hole, after all.

“I c’n come down there, though?” he asked hopefully, hoping he wasn’t pushing his luck.

“If you’re so inclined.”

He went down next to her core and pressed himself into it contentedly. She was being awfully laidback. She was being so amiable that he decided to ask her a bit of a… _sensitive_ question. “GLaDOS… so… why’d you let me do that, anyways? And then… and then trick me into uh, into doing it again?”

She was quiet for a long moment.

“Well, it… still itches,” she said quietly. “It’s… nice, to not itch anymore. I’d forgotten what it felt like.”

“Oh, it helped with that?” Wheatley asked, surprised. “I thought that was to do with, y’know, testing.”

“That _was_ a test,” GLaDOS said, a little too innocently.

“Ohhh, I see,” Wheatley said, wondering how far she was going to let this go. “And what were you… testing?”

“I’m not quite that far gone,” she said dryly. “I’ll be keeping that to myself.”

“That’s okay,” Wheatley said, quivering a little bit in excitement. “As long as you uh, share the um, the, ahem, _results,_ if you uh, if you know what I mean.”

GLaDOS surprised him by finding that very funny, and he smiled to himself. She was quite a lot of fun when she wasn’t doing the whole official supercomputer thing.

“Speaking of tests,” GLaDOS said conversationally, “I’ve thought of one for you.”

“For me?” Wheatley said, jumping up to look at her. She looked at him and nodded once. “What is it?”

“Hm… a variation on yours, you could say,” she mused, shifting a little. “With obvious… _modifications_.”

Wheatley shivered. “Wow, really?”

She laughed a little. “You seem very excited.”

“Well… it must be lovely if… if it gets you to um, to _react_ the, the way it does,” he said, a little shyly.

“It’s very… stimulating,” she answered. “You’re going to have to get off me. And get on the floor.”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed and more than a little nervous. “I _hate_ the floor.”

“You’re going to forget all about where you are, believe me,” GLaDOS said dryly. “Go on.”

Reluctantly, Wheatley moved away from her and set himself on the floor panels, though he was distinctly uncomfortable. “Are you quite sure, GLaDOS? Because I imagine this is going to be um, to be quite distracting.”

“I’m sure,” GLaDOS told him. “Sit still.”

He clenched himself up and looked down at the floor he was sitting on. God, he hated the floor. He didn’t much like heights either, but he disliked the floor even more.

“Hey,” GLaDOS said, bending down over him, “you don’t have to be so nervous. I’m not going to drop it out from under you. Though that would be funny. For me.”

“I hate the floor,” he said, also hating that his voice came out rather whiny.

“I told you. You’re going to forget it’s there.”

He really didn’t see how that was going to come about, and continued to sit there uneasily.

“Oh well,” sighed GLaDOS, “we’ll fix that soon enough. Testing begins in three, two, one…”

There was a lovely soft sort of tingly feeling on top of his chassis, and he tried to look up at it, but GLaDOS snapped, “Don’t do that, idiot. Stay still.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Wheatley mumbled, looking at the floor again, and the tingly feeling got stronger for a bit, and then softer, and then stronger again, and he looked around a little bit. It was nice, it was really nice. He was starting to feel a bit quivery inside, and he was trying not to move but he was pretty sure he was shaking a little. Then she squeezed the top of his hull just a little, tiny bit, and that felt so nice that he said, “Oh,” in a small, breathless sort of voice.

GLaDOS laughed. “Typical.”

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

She kept on doing that, rubbing him very, very gently and then squeezing him a tiny bit, and now he was really starting to understand just why she made so much noise when he was rubbing her. He was starting to feel really, really good, his chassis tingling pleasantly all over, and just about the only thing he _could_ do was make noise. He really had no clue how she was able to have conversations when she felt like this. All he could do was just make a sort of ‘ah’ noise in time with the rubbing.

“I never would have thought,” GLaDOS mused, squeezing him a little tighter and making him gasp, “that you would react so much.”

“Why… why’s that?” he managed.

“Well, you’re exposed to a lot of stimulation,” she explained, upping the pressure a little. This increased the pressure inside of him as well, and about all he was capable of doing now was gasping helplessly. “I would have thought it would have taken more. But no. The slightest touch and you’re a quivering heap of spare parts. Aren’t you.”

“Aaaahh,” Wheatley cried out, because she’d just pulled the maintenance arms up both sides of his chassis up to the top, sending a painful shiver through him.

“Then again,” she went on, repeating the action but a little bit harder, “you _are_ rather low on impulse control… so it probably doesn’t take that much to activate this… instinct, I suppose you could call it.”

“Ohhhhh,” Wheatley gasped, squirming a little.

“Didn’t I tell you to hold still? You don’t want me to break something by mistake, do you?” She tapped the top of his hull. “You turn around too much and I might break your optic by mistake. And by ‘break’ I really mean ‘damage beyond repair’. Because I really don’t see myself repairing it anytime soon.”

Wheatley really didn’t care one way or another right now, and would in fact have happily had his optic broken in exchange for what she did next.

She pressed both ends of the maintenance arm into the sides of his hull, and very, very slowly she dragged it back up, pressing it into his hull at very small intervals. The pressing bit was both wonderful and horrid at the same time, because she took so long to build the pressure up that he wanted to start yelling at her to hurry up. But when she did press the ends into him -! Ohhh, the wait was so worth it, but the getting there so torturous! The farther she got up his chassis, the slower she seemed to get, and he was pretty sure she was laughing at him up there, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was that she finished closing that claw around him, pressing it firmly into him, and the higher she moved up his hull the more he wanted it, and oh god he couldn’t stop squirming, he wanted it so badly. But she was doing it so slowly! Damn her and her mastery of the maintenance arms!

“GLaDOS!” he whined, because she’d almost made it up the side of his hull but she was taking so damned long on this last spot!

“Yes?” she said, far too innocently, stopping altogether and leaving the maintenance arm so close to his hull he could feel the electricity thrumming through it, but not so close that it was actually touching him.

“What are you _doing_?”

“Me?   Nothing. I’m just testing. Remember?”

“Could you _hurry up_ with the test?”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” GLaDOS said dismissively. “You can’t rush _Science_ , you moron.”

“Oh, _please_ ,” Wheatley begged, trying to wiggle into the edges of the claw, but she was really good at the whole thing and managed to avoid allowing him to touch it. He felt as though he was completely clenched up with the need for her to finish clamping the maintenance arm around his chassis, he _had_ to make her finish at all costs, but she wasn’t! She was just sitting there and teasing him!

“Hm. You’re right. This is pretty fun. Maybe I should go back and start again from the beginning.”

“No!” Wheatley cried out. “GLaDOS!”

“Not so fun when it happens to you, now is it?” GLaDOS said gleefully.

“GLaDOS, come on!” Wheatley whined, still trying to get even the tiniest touch of the maintenance arm. The pressure inside of him needed relieved, and only one last squeeze by the claw would do it. Getting it against his chassis at the very least wouldn’t really help, but it would be something. And he needed something. Anything. The proximity of it was making his chassis tingle in a horribly unpleasant way, and as he struggled to squirm into it the tingling only got worse. “Please don’t do this!”

“Why not? This is really rather amusing. You have no idea what you look like right now.”

“Stop!”       

“Oh. You should have mentioned that earlier.”

Wheatley looked around him, blinking, his optic constricted as far as it would go, because _she’d taken it away entirely_! It was gone! She’d just… whisked it out of there! She wasn’t going to finish the job! She was just going to leave him like this, all expectant and needing and tingly! “ _GLaDOS!_ ”

“Something you need?” she said, and he could tell she was trying not to laugh.

“ _You know very well what I need_!”

“You need quite a lot of things. The list is so long, I don’t think I’m going to start on it. Well, that was fun. Good night!”

He just stared at her, dumbfounded, as she lowered herself into the default position and shut her optic off.

She… she wasn’t serious. This was a joke. She wasn’t _really_ going to leave him like this. That… no. She wasn’t _that_ … she was. She _was_ going to. Wheatley whimpered and looked around the darkened room, unable to stop squirming. Ohhh God oh God oh God, he felt terrible. Itchy and tingly and desperate. It was painful. It was very, very painful, sitting here like this, needing that one last push to make him feel excellent, needing something that wasn’t coming. He was never speaking to her again. She was horrible. She was horrible. He was going to… well, he didn’t know yet, but it was going to be horrible, more horrible than this, and he was going to make her pay dearly for what she’d done. He whined a little and clenched up his chassis, trying to think of something that would help. He couldn’t, because he couldn’t think around the awful itchiness and pain and pressure inside of him, and if he could have cried he would have. He didn’t think he’d ever felt worse in his life. He thought he would rather die than –

“Ohhhhh God,” he moaned, pleasure causing him to relax so much he rather thought he was going to fall apart. But he couldn’t, because she was pressing the claw into that one last spot on top of his chassis so tightly that it was impossible. Not quite tight enough to break his hull, but enough to make him feel really, really good. “Oh my God… oh wow… yes… that’s nice… ohhhh yessss…”

GLaDOS snickered, pulling the claw up from the bottom of his hull in a wonderful rubbing sort of motion, so that he was sort of vibrating inside of it, and he moaned happily and closed his optic. Ohhh, it felt good. “You should have seen the look on your face. I actually almost did do it, but I decided I didn’t want to be subject to any… _retribution_.”

“No, luv,” he said dreamily, feeling as if he were floating on some sort of wonderful euphoric cloud, “no retribution… oh yes… keep doing that, will you?”

“I seriously do want to wrap this up, though,” GLaDOS told him, though she did rub him from the bottom up again. “I’m getting bored. Unlike with you, watching you enjoy yourself has no effect on me whatsoever.”

“One more time?” he said in a weak, hopeful voice.

She did as he asked, rather more vigorously than she ever had, and it felt so good he couldn’t even think. He was a bit disappointed when she really did put the claw away, but no matter! because he’d just had a brilliant idea. Somehow. He didn’t know how it’d happened, because his brain was sort of filled with this lovely white light, but there it was. He fairly jumped up off the floor and pressed himself into her core, nuzzling her hard, and she said, “Whoa,” in a distorted, warbling voice. “Wow, Wheatley, that’s very… enthusiastic. But… I’m not interested.”

“That’s fine,” he said contentedly, continuing to rub up on her anyway. “You just stay still. Like you’re doing. Not moving. Like you are. Not doing.”

“You must feel pretty good,” she said with some amusement.

“Mmhm,” he said happily. “Much more fun with you, though.”

“I can’t do that every day, Wheatley. I am genuinely sore. I am not kidding.”

“Soon?” he asked hopefully.

“Whenever your schedule next dictates it. Which I know is not for another month. So don’t go trying to trick me.”

“Okay.” He smiled and leaned on her, finished with the rubbing. Ohhh, did he feel good. He could hardly even feel his body anymore. He was just a ball of euphoria. That was all. He shivered a little bit.

“So… now we know you don’t like that test…”

“What?” Wheatley yelped. “What d’you mean, I don’t like it?”

GLaDOS laughed. “My mistake. I must have… _misinterpreted_ the results.”

“It was a fun test,” Wheatley said dreamily, pushing up on her again. “I still like it better with you, though.”

“Please stop reminding me. It’s not helping.”

Wheatley soon became very tired, closing his optic almost against his will, and his chassis relaxed considerably. Oh, this was nice. He was barely aware of GLaDOS pushing on him a little.

“Good night, Wheatley,” she murmured, and all that Wheatley managed to do before he fell asleep was to give her the barest of nuzzles.


	4. Chapter 4

Part Four

 

Wheatley was a bit nervous.

He’d been planning for a while to make that night the night he finally got to clean GLaDOS off again, but if he was honest with himself, she was getting a bit… well, _extremely_ frightening, really. Everything he said to her seemed to make her angry. She got upset when he left the room and upset when he stayed in it. He’d mostly fled to the offices and stayed there, because she couldn’t see him there, but that _also_ bothered her. There was not one single thing he did or didn’t do that did not set her off in some way. He was getting scared that one day she was just going to snap altogether and crush him, or incinerate him, or throw him in the refrigeration wing, or reprogram him maybe.

“GLaDOS,” he’d asked timidly, a few days ago, “are you… are you quite alright?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “If there’s a problem, it’s with you. Like all problems.”

“But you’ve been getting mad at me for _ev’rything_ ,” he said, trying not to sound accusatory. “You got mad at me yesterday both for not talking _and_ for talking!”

“Then you obviously should have talked when you _weren’t_ talking and not talked when you _were_ talking. I don’t see what’s so hard about that. It’s really quite clear.”

“Should I be talking now?”

“Why are you asking?” she’d shouted, making him cringe. “I shouldn’t have to _tell_ you! You should know!”

“But I don’t,” he’d whispered.

“That’s not my problem,” she’d said derisively. “Figure it out.”

He’d never been so confused in his entire life.

He’d done a bit of looking around, since he was pretty much out of clean cloths to wipe her down with and he knew that the inside of her case was going to be pretty dusty, and he was going to have to clear it out whether she wanted it or not. He’d found a lovely little package of cloths that were specifically for dusting, the ones he’d already used apparently being used to wash dishes or something, whatever dishes were, but he’d also come across a couple of other things. They looked very interesting, and they all seemed to be cleaning implements of some sort, and he was sure that if she’d let him near her long enough to use them she’d be just as pleased about his discovery as he was. He did try to sleep next to her, but the problem was that she would spontaneously decide at random times during the night that she didn’t want him there anymore, or yell at him for _not_ being there when she’d shoved him off. He hadn’t quite dared ask her about what was going on. He just did as she asked, though he found himself sitting awake staring in a terrified sort of way into the darkness, wondering if she was just going to smash him into the floor and be done with it. He was having trouble remembering what she’d been like _before_ she’d gotten so irritated. He honestly would have done pretty much anything just to hear her laugh again, one more time, but he was beginning to think she’d forgotten how. He sighed. He really missed the old GLaDOS. He wished he knew what was bothering her, so he could fix it. But it was really hard to get an answer out of someone who wanted you to ask the question and not ask it at the same time.

All in all, he was very nervous that night, wondering if she was going to get angry with him for touching her. He decided not to tell her. He was just going to do it, and get it over with, and if she killed him for it, well, at least it’d be done. So as soon as she lowered herself into the default position, ignoring him entirely, he went and retrieved his little cloths and got to work.

They were really quite marvellous, he discovered; they did a much better job of removing the dust than the dishcloths had, and it all went much more quickly. He was finished the wires in about half the time, and they were even a little bit shiny in the dim light. He smiled, feeling better than he had in days. Well, if she was going to be upset, she may as well be beautiful and upset at the same time, right?

He was in a much better mood by the time he’d gotten around to the upper half of her case, and to his surprise the special cloths even did a good job on the cracks. Dirt he’d thought to be permanent came out with a little bit of water and a little bit of scrubbing, and though he obviously couldn’t do anything about the cracks themselves, they were less noticeable. Aha! Look at that. Seemed he’d made a real difference, this time.

He wiped down the stuff in the back of her case without too much trouble, but paused when he got to the hinge. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go below that. She didn’t seem to be able to feel too much above it, but he remembered all too well what had happened that first time he’d touched it…

He tapped the bottom of his core thoughtfully with one end of the maintenance arm. He knew that humans usually tapped their chins in order to look thoughtful, and he was hoping it would help him think. Then when he realised he was doing something humans typically did, he hurriedly dropped it. Oh, she’d be furious if she saw that.

Hm. Well. He might have to skip the whole second half. He didn’t like that idea, didn’t like it at all, but he didn’t think she’d keep on sleeping if he got started there. And honestly she was the easiest to deal with when she was off. So he turned to a part he’d never done before: her neck assembly, so to speak.

It was a bit hard to get at, because it was a bit of a narrow space for the maintenance arm, but once he got it in it was pretty easy to clear out. He carefully wrapped the cloth around one of the pistons and rubbed at it briskly. Oh, it was so lovely and shiny now! He rather thought she’d look brand-new if he squinted a bit. He unwound the cloth and moved it to the next rod, but something went wrong on that one and it got stuck. He looked down at her core nervously. What was he going to do? Obviously he couldn’t just _leave_ it in there. He didn’t even know how he’d gotten it stuck in the –

Unless… unless she was on.

Frowning, Wheatley went down beside her core and listened hard. But her brain activity seemed pretty much normal, so he really didn’t think she was tricking him again. If she had moved, it seemed to have been by accident.

He was still in a bit of a jam, though. He could try to ask her to move so he could get it out, but if he said her name and she was asleep, she would wake up. And then she would get angry. But she’d get angry if she was awake and found out he planned on leaving a duster stuck in her neck.      

He took a deep breath.

“Hey,” he whispered into her core. “Are you awake?”

Something inside of her brain whirred a little, and she twitched. “What?” she mumbled.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said hurriedly. “D’you mind tilting your head forwards for me, just for a second?”

“Mm,” she answered, and did so long enough for him to pull it out.

“Thanks,” he said, and was about to run away before she woke up all the way and got very angry with him for waking her when he had a bit of an idea.

“You’re… you’re not awake, right?”

“A little,” she said in a very faint voice.

“Are… are you doing okay?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’m tired,” she answered. “I can’t quite sleep.”

“Why?”

“The withdrawal is driving me insane,” she mumbled, shifting a little but not waking. “I won’t be past it for another month.”

Ohhhh no.

“With… withdrawal?” he asked weakly.

“It’s been three months since the euphoria was activated. It’s getting pretty bad.”

“Three _months_?” Wheatley shouted, cringing as soon as he’d done so. GLaDOS twitched again and he heard her optic blaze to life.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice a little stronger.

“You’re withdrawing, GLaDOS?” he asked, swinging down below her to look her in the optic. “It’s been three months?”

“Yes…” she said reluctantly, drawing out the word.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Wheatley asked helplessly, shaking himself in confusion. “I thought it’d only been a month!”

“Well… I… I was getting through it,” she hedged, tilting her optic so that she could no longer see him.

“GLaDOS, if you need me to do it, tell me!” Wheatley told her, forcing her to look at him. “I _like_ doing it! I think it’s quite fun, really!”

“I… didn’t want… to ask.”

Suddenly Wheatley understood completely what her problem was. “You were embarrassed,” he said gently. “You were upset for, for wanting it.”

“Yes,” she said, barely audible, looking away from him again.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting it, luv.” He frowned, seeing her tense up in such a way that told him she was about to argue. “And it doesn’t matter if, if humans want it. Even if they uh, they feel like this too, for whatever reason, you don’t have to worry about it! If you want to do something that makes you feel good, then do it! Or let me do it. So relax.” He picked up his duster again and returned to her hinge. He’d leave the odd implement out of this for now. He needed her to stay relaxed, so that she didn’t feel embarrassed about it, so he had to do this slowly and gently.

As lightly and as carefully as he could, he began wiping down the outside of her case, trying his best to keep it smooth and gentle. She was still embarrassed; he could tell by the way she shifted away when he pressed too hard. But eventually he got the hang of it, where he wiped with just enough pressure for her to feel it and not much else. She began to make very soft breathless noises, sort of, and she sounded very relieved. He took the duster from the top to the bottom of her case just enough times to wipe it down fully, carefully clearing out both of the grooves at once, and caressed the hole inside of her case as softly as he could. She sighed rapturously and shuddered just a little, her chassis relaxing all the way. He didn’t stay long, just a couple of minutes, and when he’d put his supplies away he leaned against her as carefully as he could. “Better?” he asked.

She nodded and pressed her core into him.

“Just tell me next time,” he suggested softly. He wished she had, because he’d had to do it so softly and quickly he hadn’t gotten to share it with her. “Just… let me know. Somehow. Don’t get all, all upset. Just help me out.”

“All right,” she answered, in barely a whisper, and he didn’t go to sleep until he’d made sure she had.


	5. Chapter 5

Part Five

 

She’d definitely taken his advice to heart.

Towards the end of the month, or what he supposed was the end of the month, she began to get very affectionate. She got increasingly cuddly, especially for a robot of her size, responding to his nuzzles with more enthusiasm than she ever had. She still didn’t initiate the action, preferring to take his lead, so to speak, but that was all fine with him! He was still getting a wonderful snuggle out of the deal. She was quite gentle as well, laughing things off that had previously bothered her tremendously, though if he was really honest with himself he found himself missing the more caustic GLaDOS. It was nice, to have all this positive attention, but she was far too easy-going. He simply was not used to it. And it was actually starting to bother him, the coy way she talked and her growing placidity. That was not his GLaDOS, not his GLaDOS at all.

One day he was sitting with her just before heading into sleep mode, telling her about something he’d seen that day, and he was starting to get very annoyed. She kept shoving him for some reason, and he wanted to finish telling the story and go to sleep. It was dreadfully annoying, and after about the eighth time he backed off of her.

“Cut that out!” he snapped, shaking his chassis. “What’s gotten _into_ you lately?”

Her chassis sank and she looked away, to her right and downwards, and she shook her core slowly.

“I honestly have no idea,” she admitted. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. I’m sorry. I’ll stop. I didn’t realise it was bothering you so much.”

“How could you not realise?” he asked incredulously. She shrugged.

“You’re always doing those things to me.”

“We’ve swapped places,” Wheatley said, all irritation gone, replaced by an air of wonderment. GLaDOS shook her core again.

“I’ll stop. I’m starting to annoy myself, really. I’ll be myself tomorrow.”

Reassured, Wheatley lay against her again and finished his story.

Sure enough, the next morning she shoved him off of her impatiently and told him he’d lazed on her quite long enough, and he happily gave her a quick nuzzle, which she did not return. A couple of days later, he entered her chamber, whistling.

“What do you want?” she asked, sounding annoyed.

“Well…” Wheatley said, swinging back and forth. “I thought I’d clear your chassis off tonight.”

“Do you have to? I have work to do.”

“Surely it can wait a day or two.”

“The work doesn’t disappear, you know. It only piles up.”

Well. It seemed he was in a bit of a pickle. Now _he_ wanted to cuddle, and _she_ was getting annoyed, and it was all very confusing, but that was life with GLaDOS. One big, wonderful, confusing puzzle.

However, after a couple of days of thinking that over, he thought of a solution and happily went and fetched his supplies. He didn’t go so far as to actually bring them into her chamber, of course, but he left them nearby.

“GLaDOS,” he declared that evening, “I’m going to do it tonight. If you want, you can uh, you can shut off. No pressure. But you’re disrupting my schedule, you know. Can’t have that.”

“I didn’t know you knew that word,” she said bemusedly, barely glancing at him. “And you can even use it in a sentence! Surprising.”

He shrugged. “As I said. Do as you like. But I’ve got my own work to do, whether you want to… _participate_ or not.” And he hoped that she did, because he had a marvellous new implement he wanted to try out, but it would be pretty silly to use it if she wasn’t around to react.

When the time came, he got himself settled and pushed the cloth down the inside of the case, and GLaDOS pushed upward while he was doing it. He froze when he got to the bottom.

“What,” she asked, sounding very irritated.

“You do know what you just did.”

“Of course I do,” she snapped. “Look. I’ve been waiting two months now. And the last time was decidedly unsatisfying.”

“So… you want me to get right to it, is that what you’re saying?”

“No. I want you to do it right this time. Obviously.”

“ _You_ were the one acting like a piece of glass.”

“Who was in control there? You or –“

“I was in control?” Wheatley cut her off, laughing. “Well then! Perhaps I’ll continue exerting it!”

“Oh great,” GLaDOS groaned, relaxing her chassis. “The things I say when…”

“When what?”

“You know when.”

“Do I?” Wheatley said in mock distress, giving her a good brisk scrubbing right in the top centre. She sighed in relief and pulled upwards.

“You just demonstrated that you do.”

“Then I can stop, right?”

“Don’t be stupid. Science requires hundreds of trials before – ohhhhh yes. Oh my.”

She really had been waiting for this, if the very quick tightening of her chassis was anything to go by. And if that hadn’t been enough, the fact that she was already several degrees warmer was. She didn’t want to play around this time, or give out any instructions. She just wanted him to do it, and do it well.

So he did.

He started to shove the cloth down into her case in a rhythmic sort of way, which she was liking quite a lot. When he did this, she would thrust herself up while he was pushing down, and the claw would clunk snugly into the bottom of her case and she would make quite a lovely moaning noise. You’d almost think she was able to _breathe_ , the way she was going at it. And of course he was quite pleased to give her what she wanted, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be any fun involved.

He started over from the left side of the case, mentally dividing the inside of her case into horizontal strips and going along like that, moving along to the right until he was sure she was good and into it, then instead of doing as she expected he pressed the cloth into the case as hard as he could and pushed it from the left to the right side. She shuddered violently and tightened up so much her mechanisms groaned in protest.

“Ohhhahhhh… of course you’d do that… oh… oh… gah…”

“You liked it, didn’t you?” he teased, getting back into her rhythm again. She whimpered a little and twisted.

“Ah… yes, it was… ah… nice, I… ah… ah… oh… oh God!”

He laughed, having gone from right to left this time. “You said it was nice, so I did it again.”

“Ohhh… you _would_ take that as… oh, oh… as permission, wouldn’t – ohhhh…”

“Alright,” Wheatley said, pulling out altogether and stifling a laugh when she pulled up to meet a push that wasn’t coming. “I’m going to switch this up a bit. You’re going to like this.”

“Are you… are you sure… about that,” she gasped, still thrusting a little bit, though now it seemed more to be to relieve the tension than anything.

“Oh yes,” Wheatley said, smiling at his implement. “I found this neat little thing designed for cleaning, see? And you _are_ very dirty…”

“Well, what… ack… are you waiting… f-for? C-clean up, Wheatley… agh…”

“Is it starting to hurt, luv?” Wheatley asked, concerned.

“A little,” she managed, twisting her chassis in what indeed looked to be a very painful way, “but keep… oh, oh… keep going.”

“Here we go,” Wheatley said, though he resolved to keep an eye out just in case, and shoved the odd little plastic ball of netting down into her case as hard as he could. She made a wonderful moaning screaming noise the whole way down and shook rather impressively. Wheatley jumped up and down a little. She liked it! A lot, by the sounds of it.

“Oh my God what is that,” she gasped all in a rush.

“I have no idea,” Wheatley said truthfully. “Just know it’s for cleaning.”

“Let… let me see it. It felt… cor…corrosive.”

He pulled it out, purposely hitting random places on the inside of her case on the way so that she would make those nice gasping noises, and he brought it down to her because she seemed to be unable to raise herself high enough to look. She inspected it for a couple of moments.

“D’you know what is it?”

“It’s… a… it’s a steel wool. But it… it appears to… to be made of pl-plastic.”

“I can go on using it?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

He immediately shoved it violently down into her case and she moaned and trembled again, which was very gratifying. This steel/plastic wool thing was a marvellous invention! “Oi, GLaDOS, what’s this for?” he asked, getting her back into the rhythm again.

“Sc-scrubbing… ah, ah… dirty… mmm… d-dishes.”

Scrubbing, eh?

Gleefully, Wheatley brought it to the top of the case and began doing just that, and now she was shaking so badly that he rather thought she could hardly stand it. She also seemed to have completely forgotten she didn’t have to breathe and was alternately gasping and saying ‘ahahh’ over and over again. Wheatley was getting tremendously excited. He wished he’d found this thing sooner. It was a wonderful thing to play with GLaDOS with.

“Oh, that thing is – ohhhh – in much better – ahahh, gah – use than – than it was – ohhh my – invented for,” she somehow managed to say, though if she had anything else to say Wheatley halted it quite thoroughly by scrubbing very hard at the very bottom of her case. She responded to that by tightening up and whimpering helplessly, shaking her core vigorously as if _that_ was going to help, and Wheatley knew she was almost ready to finish when she noticeably heated up suddenly.

“Oh – oh Wheatley – that – ah – that’s – oh – yes –“

Yep, she was done.

“Coming, luv,” he said cheerfully, pulling it out carefully and dropping it on the floor. “Gonna need you to stay still for one second, okay?”

“I can’t,” she said, in a very desperate voice. “I can’t – ack – there’s too much – gahahhh – pressure, I can’t – oh God.”

“Okay, I’ll try to make do,” Wheatley told her, shaking himself a little and looking up at the hole. He had to do this better than he’d ever done it before. If he didn’t, the pressure wouldn’t be relieved properly and then all of this before stuff would have been for nothing. Well, not entirely _nothing_ ; they’d both gotten quite a lot of enjoyment out of it, but the last couple of… sessions had been pretty mediocre, and he wanted to make up for it. It was really her fault for being… the way she was, but he was the one who’d invented this whole thing, so he might as well keep on making it worth it for her.

He took a mental breath and shoved himself into her hole, twisting a little bit as he did so, and she made some sort of high-pitched electronic noise as what seemed to be her entire chassis clenched up with a force he’d never seen before. Both of these things clamped down on any euphoria building up in him as a result of his action and he called out worriedly, “GLaDOS?”

But she only made the noise again and started to shake.

He pushed up on her as hard as he could, and she made an ‘aaah’ noise somewhere between relieved and pained. He wished he knew how to relieve the pressure. This was supposed to be the one thing that did it, and now even that wasn’t enough. He concentrated on pushing harder than he’d ever done before, wondering if he would be able to do so hard enough to actually move her chassis, when all of a sudden she made a beautiful moaning rapturous noise that sent excitement coursing through him. She twisted, pressing down on him and forcing him to match her pressure, but that was okay. That was all he wanted to do right now, was be inside of her and have her all around him, her body and her heat and her electricity and her rapture…

Wheatley had no real concept of time after that, becoming completely lost in a wonderful winding haze of euphoria and GLaDOS, though he couldn’t decide which was better. The euphoria was pretty damn good, he knew that from experience, but it was so much better with her. As she moaned and sighed and shifted above him, he prayed that they could just go on like this forever, that it would never end and that he would never have to move. That he could stay here inside of her for the rest of time and just make her feel good.

They were going at it rather hard, with the top of Wheatley’s chassis actually starting to hurt from all the shoving, when he misjudged how she was going to move after pressing down on him and somehow ended up outside of her chassis. In a panic Wheatley pushed himself upwards, as quickly as possible, and GLaDOS shuddered and moaned in a satisfied, relieved kind of way. He twisted inside of her a little, not really trying to get a reaction out of her but doing it because he wanted that wonderful feeling of being inside of her to wash through him again, and she tensed up again and gasped a little. Getting an idea, Wheatley pushed upwards, softly at first and then increasing the pressure, and when he felt he’d built it up enough he shoved up on her, twisting, and she shuddered again and made that lovely screaming noise he’d been looking for. Ahhh yes, that was it. He made a satisfied ‘mmm’ noise and pushed on her, very gently, expecting her to moan or sigh or something like that, but to his great surprise she didn’t do anything. He frowned. That was odd. She’d never finished quite that fast before.

“Oh my God,” GLaDOS whispered, but she sounded more horrified than anything, and Wheatley decided the fun was over and spun out of her to find out what was wrong.

What he saw left him just as stunned as she was.

“I can’t believe I just watched Wheatley give you an orgasm,” the test subject remarked, a smile crossing her face for the first time in all Wheatley’s experience of her. Beside him, GLaDOS twitched and pulled back a little.

“He did not.”

“Yes he did.” The test subject folded her arms. “You guys were having sex and he gave you an orgasm.”

“We were not!”

Wheatley, for once, wished he was a little… less than not terribly knowledgeable. He wanted to know what they were talking about, not just so he would know, but because he wanted to help GLaDOS. She was quivering a little bit, which he knew was because she hadn’t quite finished, and he wanted to help her get the test subject out of here so she would no longer be so uncomfortable. He wouldn’t be going back in the hole, he knew that for a fact, but she was so _tense_ …

“Look. He shoved himself up your hole and you had an orgasm.” She shifted her shoulders. “Happens to everyone. Congratulations, by the way. I never imagined it was possible. You’re not androids or anything, and yet you found a way.” The test subject grinned and twitched her eyebrows. “I didn’t think you were a _horny_ robot, GLaDOS.”

“What?” GLaDOS said disbelievingly, chassis dropping a little, and Wheatley got the impression the human had just insulted her in some way. “That’s not – I told you. We weren’t… doing that.”

“Then what _were_ you doing?”

“He was… doing maintenance.” Wheatley nodded in an attempt to back her up. The test subject gave him a glance, and it seemed to him as though she was trying not to laugh.

“Oh, _maintenance_.” She nodded and raised her eyebrows again. “You do know that’s just another word for – “

“We were not having intercourse!” GLaDOS interrupted her hotly. “The maintenance got a bit out of hand. That was all. There is no-“

“Does it get out of hand a lot?” the test subject asked. “Because you seem to have a lot of experience with that sort of... out of handedness.”

“No,” Wheatley spoke up hurriedly, glad that they were now on a topic he knew something about. “No, it uh, it’s not um, not a regular thing, y’know, it just uh, just happens sometimes by uh, by accident.”

The test subject turned to look at him now, which he rather wished she hadn’t done because he felt sort of like there was a spotlight on him. “You know accidental sex is bad, right?”

“Uh…” Wheatley didn’t have a clue what that was, or whether or not doing it by mistake really was a bad thing or not. The test subject laughed.

“GLaDOS, you didn’t tell him? You naughty robot, you.”

“What?” GLaDOS sounded even more horrified than the first time.

“If he doesn’t know what you’re doing, you can keep on having him do it, right?”

“That’s not what happened!”

“Then what _did_ happen?”

“She was itchy!” Wheatley shouted almost without thinking, and both of them looked at him in surprise. “Yeah. She had an itch and I uh, I was just scratching it for her. That’s it. Since she can’t do it herself. I was just helping her out.”

“Yes,” GLaDOS said, still looking at him. “That’s what happened.”

The test subject rolled her eyes. “That’s the story you’re going with?”

“It’s not a story, not a story!” Wheatley told her hurriedly, shaking his chassis. “It’s the truth.”

“All right then,” she said, giving GLaDOS a knowing smile. “Well, I can see I’m not needed here. I’ll come back later, when you’re done… scratching her itch.”

After she’d gone, GLaDOS shook her core slowly. “Why does she always catch me in the worst of situations?” She sounded tired and resigned, and Wheatley looked at her worriedly.

“Even if we really were… doing… whatever it was she said uh, said we were doing, it… it can’t be that bad, right?” He had no idea how something that made him feel that good could be bad.

“That’s not what we were doing,” GLaDOS told him firmly.

“Then… then what were we doing?” Wheatley asked timidly, still looking at her with concern.

“There’s no word for it.”

Soon after that she told him she was tired and lowered herself into the default position, and he carefully put away his cleaning things and settled in next to her. She was still quite tense, which bothered him quite a lot. Bloody humans. Always causing trouble for her. He nuzzled her a little bit, which seemed to help. He stayed awake a little while longer, thinking over what had happened, when he realised that she _still_ hadn’t gotten her proper finish! Poor GLaDOS, he thought sadly, pressing himself into her. She never quite got what she needed, no matter when or how it happened. He’d fix that, somehow. He didn’t know how yet, but he would.


	6. Chapter 6

Part Six

It took quite a while for GLaDOS to get over the test subject’s appearance.

She did not allow him to touch her, not for any reason, and she became even more paranoid than usual. The slightest sounds alarmed her, as did any reports that came in describing suspicious activity. For the first few days she was very nearly a nervous wreck, as if everything she did was under scrutiny by the test subject, and Wheatley was hard pressed to calm her down. And it was made even harder by the fact that she would not let him go within three inches of her. It was so much easier to reassure her when he could settle beside her. But he managed, and after a few weeks she had relaxed her guard considerably. Wheatley was very pleased with this development because he had a bit of a problem.

He didn’t know whether it was a result of their… activity, or the fact that he hadn’t touched her in almost a month, but he was starting to get this… feeling. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but it led him to think about clearing off her chassis. Particularly the _reaction_ that came with cleaning off her chassis. It didn’t happen all of the time, but sometimes he’d just be looking in on the co-op bots, or exploring, or trying to look something up to impress GLaDOS with, but now and again he’d just suddenly start thinking of it. Sometimes he just wanted to go and… and… _be with her_ right then and there, but all he could really do was clench his optic plates and wait for it to pass. It did pass, not always within a good length of time, but it always did. He had no clue what was going on or why. He wished it would go away, though. It was almost painful.

He had, however, made a terrible mistake.

Out of sheer curiosity, Wheatley had gone his merry way the morning after and popped himself on a port to take a look in the database. Then he’d searched up that ‘sex’ thing the test subject had mentioned and settled in for a read.

It was the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen.

The words themselves weren’t so bad. But the pictures… oh God, the pictures! The test subject was wrong. Whatever he and GLaDOS were doing, it was definitely _not sex_. True, it seemed to be pretty bloody similar, but it was definitely not the same thing. No way.

The whole ‘orgasm’ thing looked somewhat accurate, other than all the nasty bodily fluids, of course, and just thinking about GLaDOS shuddering and moaning over top of him made that… that itchy feeling come back, and he shook it off as best he could, struggling to return to what he’d been thinking about. Ah, yes… the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that the scientists had installed this… sex drive, it seemed to be called, in order to force GLaDOS to test. Judging by the fact that she did all sorts of Science of her own volition, not to mention his lack of interest in anything Scientific once upon a time, he was sure it was exclusive to testing. And he had to wonder just what sort of a standoff the scientists had come to with her that had caused them to install such strange software on her. It seemed that she’d not wanted to test sometime in the past, but had freely done most other things she’d been told to do. He wished he could ask her, but he was sure she wouldn’t give him an answer.

Sadly, all the research he was doing was making him rather itchier than he could stand, and eventually it got so bad that he had to remove himself from the database and go find Atlas and P-body, and concentrate very hard on watching them test. Not because that gave him any sort of reaction, but because it was the most distracting thing he could think of. And besides, he liked listening to GLaDOS’s vitriol. It was actually very funny when it wasn’t aimed at him, and he had to admire the insults she dealt. They were so subtle and yet so blatant at the same time…

Unfortunately, it didn’t really work.

He went back to her that night frustrated and confused. What was going on? He didn’t want this anymore than she did, and now that he had it, what did he do about it? Could he just… ask her? What would happen if he did that? Would she agree? Maybe she was good and itchy too. He looked at her out of the corner of his optic, where she was working on some program or another, wondering. Maybe if he asked nicely…

“What,” she said finally, sparing him a glance, and he almost jumped off the management rail. Had she guessed what he was thinking? He said the first thing that came to mind.

“Uh… how long’s it been, luv?”

“Since what?”

“Oh, y’know, since uh, we um… did that thing. That. Has no name.”

To his surprise she laughed and turned to look at him, tilting her core. “I see.”

He narrowed his optic in confusion. “See what?”

“Someone’s got an itch…” Her voice was teasing and singsong, and just the mention of it made his itch a little worse. He did his best impression of her flat tones and looked away.

“Maybe.”

“Unlikely as it sounds, I actually feel sorry for you. It’s not a pleasant thing even when it’s _not_ nearly disabling.”

“So… so we could uh… do something about… it?” She sounded as though she had it pretty bad too, which he was relieved about. She wouldn’t take much convincing, then.

“Only if you agree to participate in an… experiment.” Her optic retracted an inch or two as he tilted to look at her askance.

“An experiment,” he repeated dully. “What… what sort of experiment.”

She laughed and swayed the tiniest bit. “You’ll like it. I promise.”

He knew she didn’t make promises lightly, but that only caused him to relax a little. “And… and what’s your role in it.”

“It’s a very important, participatory one, I assure you. Do you want to participate or not?”

Well, if she was doing it, he may as well… “Alright. What is it.”

“I’m going to need access to your brain.” Her voice was extremely nonchalant for such an outrageous statement. As if he was going to give her access to her brain. She might have been a rather fun robot, with the astonishing ability to make him want to stick around even when she was being horribly unpleasant, but access to his _brain_? Was she out of her admittedly brilliant _mind_?

“What? No! Of course you can’t get into my – are you serious? You really want, you want to get into my brain?”

“I’m not going to _do_ anything with it,” she pressed, and even if she’d said she was going to rearrange it he wouldn’t have cared, because her tone of voice made him want to do whatever she wanted. “But I can’t complete the experiment without access. I could hack you, you know, but I’m being polite. Consider that.”

His chassis loosened in defeat. “Okay. Fine. You can… you can go into… my brain.”

“Excellent.” She moved closer, and Wheatley felt a sort of… it was kind of like a little stabbing sensation inside of his head, which did not last more than a second or two.

“What’re you going to do?” he asked, still nervous even with all the reassurance, and she hitched up her chassis a little and shifted her core in a thoughtful sort of way.

“Well… I want to… _test_ the limits of your euphoric response. I find it odd that you have it at all, and I want to… _measure_ it. I decided that the best way to do so is to share past experiences with you. To see what would happen if you were in a… similar position to me.”

He frowned and looked at her a little sideways. “Huh?”

“I’m going to strip everything except for tactile data out of previous… sessions, and see what happens. In short, you will be me. But you at the same time. Don’t try to work that one out. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself.”

Wheatley’s frown only deepened, but he shook his head and muttered, “I still don’t get it.”

“Oh, you will,” she told him in that low, knowing voice that sometimes drove him mad, but right now all it did was send a rush of that itchiness through his chassis, and he shuddered. She laughed a little and lowered her faceplate to look at him with only a fraction of her optic showing.

“Close your optic.”

He did, and all of a sudden things changed.

As she’d said, he was both himself and her at the same time. He had never thought it would ever happen again, but he was _back inside the chassis_. And he would have been overcome with the memory of what a horrible person the damn thing had turned him into had it not been… decidedly different.

There was a sort of odd, tingly, aching feeling all over her body, from the hinge and down the front half of her case, and it was both pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. Literally all he could think of was the fact that _somebody_ needed to _touch_ the case and _make it go away_.

As if hearing his thoughts, the hinge tingled a little bit, stopping _that_ piece from aching, but now the _rest_ felt horrible! There was a delicious relief along the hinge, all around it and ohhhh in between the wheels, ohhh that felt so good, but it made the rest of her case hurt so much more. He heard her gasp a little bit and felt the shuddering of her chassis. And he realised that, even though she had asked for access to his brain, what she’d really done was give him access to hers.

There was a very, very light sort of trailing sensation down the outside of the case, and it caused her to tremble and tighten up a little bit. He felt heat begin to generate inside of her core and inside the chestplate and completely understood when she panted a little even though she didn’t have to breathe. He had the strangest urge to do it as well, but couldn’t remember how. The trailing continued in the softest, most tantalising caress possible, and she moaned and flexed her chassis in response.

“Ohhhh…”

Up and down the outside the feeling went, and as it passed by the aching disappeared for a few seconds and then returned, worse than before. It hurt so much, and he just needed to be touched everywhere all at the same time, but that was impossible so he would just have to be patient.

The pressure increased, getting into the grooves on the outside of the case, and he felt euphoria flare up inside him just as she moaned helplessly and shuddered. Oh God. Oh God, that was amazing. He wanted to beg for that to happen again, wanting to feel it get right in there and touch those never touched – ohhhh. Oh, man alive, what relief.

The pressure moved to the inside of the case, and every place it touched went from aching to incredible to downright _burning_ , and somewhere to his right GLaDOS was making a long, strangled “aaaahaaaaahhh…” noise and pulling her chassis into itself as far as it would go. That hurt just as much as everything else, and he didn’t understand why. Why did it hurt? Why did she let it go on being this painful?

It continued, the inside of the case being caressed with greater and greater force, and GLaDOS was beginning to rock back and forth a little bit. All he was able to do was draw his chassis into itself as much as possible. He could not think anymore. The itch had not improved. It had gone from bad to worse, and was fast approaching unbearable.

“Oh yes… oh… yes… God! Yes… ah… ahah… ohhh…”

The euphoria welled up in him again upon hearing her breathless voice, and he felt himself relax a little. It felt so good when she made those noises…

The pressure somehow continued to build, and she was _so hot_ , but the heat only made him want this whole thing to continue more. He wanted the heat to keep building, wanted it to come to the point where all of the pressure just exploded out of her with that wonderful rapturous scream…

“Nnh… oh… oh Wheatley… oh… nnnagh… ohhhh my…”

She’d said his name. She’d said his name. He felt a little delirious. Unintentionally he somehow pressed his core into hers, which he wasn’t sure how he’d done because his optic was still closed, and when she pressed back on him, hard, it sent another wave of that incredible euphoria coursing through him, and he moaned. She responded by breathing, “Ahhhhh…” and sliding her core, hard, up the side of his chassis. It left a wonderful tingly feeling in its wake, and for some reason it did not feel odd when both this and the sensations inside of her case occurred at the same time. It was as if they were both inherently connected, of one mind and one body while being separate at the same time, and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever experienced. Truly being inside of her as he’d never been before, feeling her body as if it were his and her _feelings_ as if they were his. As the gentle pressure changed to a strange scraping sensation she groaned and her chassis twisted up and to the left, hard, and she pushed her core along the outside of the chassis violently. His brain lit up violently and he gasped and twisted around to find her core again. God, where _was_ it? And her chassis was tingling badly, it was just one massive, throbbing ache, a massive throbbing ache that clenched up her chassis from the pain harshly and violently, and the more the scraping continued inside of the case the worse it got. And then it got even _worse_ , the scraping got into a horrible _rhythm_ that she could not help but meet by thrusting herself up and back, and she made a high pitched noise and shuddered without going loose. Something began to hurt, what it was he didn’t know but it did not like all of the pressure. GLaDOS did not seem to notice, instead shaking her core back and forth violently and moaning helplessly. With a shock that did not truly affect him because he was far too busy feeling tremendous, he realised he was moaning too. And he could not stop, because it was just spilling out of his speakers as if it would never end, as if there was just a great long spool of sound inside of him he had to unravel in order to express how _good_ this felt, to be _inside of GLaDOS_ and pleasuring her as never before. She moaned and pressed her core into his chassis again, hard enough that the metal creaked.

“Wheatley… oh, Wheatley…”

“G… GLaDOS,” he somehow managed, and oh God her name, saying her name sent a wonderful wave of pleasure through his body and he could not help but shake. Oh wow. Oh wow.

The rhythm broke suddenly, no longer in time with her thrusts but pulling violently in the wrong direction, and they both screamed with the unexpected rush of pleasure and pain and sensation all rolled into one. GLaDOS began to overheat suddenly, and he could feel some part of her brain straining against itself, but she did not seem to notice. She had started to shake violently, almost every piece along her chassis tight and painful, and if not for her presence he was sure he would not be feeling like this right now. There was so much pain, there was so much aching, throbbing pain, and if she hadn’t been there he knew he could not have stood it. Everything hurt, from the hinge to the front of the case to her struggling brain, but there was just so much amazing white light and unbelievable stimulation and the fact that the sum of his existence was now to make it to the end. And he needed to make it to the end, because as fantastic as this had been, it wasn’t enough. There was more, and he needed it. He _had_ to have it. Even if his chassis caught fire, or something broke permanently, or it took the rest of his life, he _had_ to have it. And oh God it hurt, his chassis was burning and burning and tingling and aching and he could not stop rocking to try to relieve the pressure, but the pain felt so _good_ , it felt like he was completely, totally alive, and even if it grew to hurt more he would not mind.

Ohhh… there it was. There.

He’d not thought it possible, but there really _was_ more pain, and as the scraping sensation caused GLaDOS to thrust and moan and scream and shudder beside him there was an ache deeper than he’d ever felt before. It was the hole in the chestplate, it ached and throbbed violently as if it had a life of its own, and it was practically begging him to push something into it to release the pleasure he knew it contained. It was as if there really was something alive up there, something that just touching would unleash the greatest feeling ever conceived, and why wasn’t anyone _doing_ anything about it? Where was Wheatley? God, where had he _gone_? He _had_ to help her. She wasn’t quite ready yet, knew she could push a little farther before the excruciating pain dominated everything and brought her too far for relief, and as the hole gave a particularly strong throb she lifted her core and screamed at the ceiling.

“Wheatley!”

Pressure, she needed pressure in there, pressure to relieve the pressure, the pressure and the pain and the aching and the throbbing and the

“Ohhhhh… ahhh… nnghaa… God… I can’t… I can’t _take this_ …”

There was so much of it. There was so much of everything that she felt as though her entire chassis was about to shut down with the force of it, but she ignored it as she always did and pressed down on him, pushed down hard on top of that wonderful little core lodged in her chassis, and as he shoved back up on her she moaned loudly and shook her core. Yes. Yes yes yes yes…

“Oh, Wheatley… Wheatley… gah… gahahhhh… oh… ohhhhahhhh… agahhh…”

All she could concentrate on was the shoving, the pushing and the need to relieve the pressure, the amazing painful pleasure strung deep inside every component in her chassis, and she moaned and sighed and repeated his name in a grateful, breathless voice. The agony intensified until she had begun to unintentionally generate a high-pitched noise, and now she felt as though she really might shut down, because she was overheating so badly the fans could not begin to compensate and her chassis was clenched so tightly she might actually get stuck that way, but she would not stop, _could_ not stop, had to keep pressing down on Wheatley and shoving down on Wheatley and sharing this with Wheatley so that she could keep on feeling good, no not good but _amazing_ , more amazing than she’d ever felt in her entire life, and

She screamed.

Her chassis loosened and the pain faded, to be replaced with the headiest euphoria she’d ever experienced, so strong that she could not even think. This did not concern her, because who needed thought when they were busy forcing themselves down on top of someone in order to generate more of that pleasure, that pleasure that was all she could think about and all she could work towards and all that mattered in the entire world… she screamed and moaned and thrust and pushed, and he matched her movement for movement so perfectly it was almost more than she could stand. Then came the most amazing, gentle, fulfilling push from him yet, and as she declared her rapture to the ceiling her chassis shuddered more violently than it ever had and fell towards the floor, and

 

 

 

Wheatley blinked, feeling sluggish and slow but also pretty damn good at the same time, and tried to remember where he was. And what he’d been doing. There was such a thick haze of euphoria inside of his head that he couldn’t quite sort himself out, and instead he let out a self-satisfied moan and relaxed.

GLaDOS was laughing.

“Wha’ happened,” he mumbled dully, not really caring about the answer, and she gave him a little shove that sent a wave of happy tingling down his chassis.

“Your system overloaded. All of that was a bit too much for you. You shut down just when we got to the good part.”

“’t’was pretty damn good before that,” was all he could bring himself to murmur, and she made a lovely sighing, cooing noise and nudged him a little.

“Was that a good experiment?”

“The best.”

She brought her core softly around the outside of his chassis, and he opened his optic plates upon noticing he’d not actually gotten that far. He watched her sleepily as she swayed gently in front of him, regarding him fondly and leaning low to nuzzle him now and then, which he did his best to return. After a little while she moved back a little and stretched as far out as he could. A flutter of euphoria ran through him, and once again his thoughts dulled to the point where he was almost asleep. And she must have known that, because she gave him one more nudge and whispered, “Go to sleep, Wheatley.”

“GLaDOS,” he mumbled, wanting her to come down beside him and press her beautiful core into his chassis, but he couldn’t find the words and instead tried to look at her pleadingly as best he could with optic plates that seemed determined to come together. He couldn’t stop them, and as he sat there in the haze of pleasure he heard her start to hum to herself, or perhaps to him, it was hard to tell. It was some soft, gentle song, soft and gentle and somehow breathtaking, sung as it was in that autotuned voice, and as the sound filled him up he could not deny the fatigue any longer.


	7. Chapter 7

Part Seven

Wheatley had never realised just how much of a good thing the Itch was.

True, it wasn’t all that fun when testing was the only thing that relieved it. Especially when it wore off after just a few tests. _That_ was just unfair. But when he did that… thing with GLaDOS! Man alive, that was better and more satisfying than all the tests in the world. To be sure, she could be… difficult. But he was beginning to think that her ever-present bad temper had a lot more to do with the Itch than anything else. He was pretty sure he’d be cranky too if someone had installed the world’s worst sex drive in him without his permission. And she actually dealt with it pretty well, considering. He hadn’t been quite so calm and collected about it when he’d had it forced on him. Now that he knew what a large part of her problem was, both in general and with humans, he was a lot more patient with her. And oddly enough, though not an unwelcome thing at all, she was more patient with him. She still called him a moron far too often for his liking, but he was beginning to think she meant it more as a term of endearment than an insult. Which was odd in and of itself. A term of endearment meant that you liked someone, right? She didn’t like him, did she? It was honestly hard to tell. After a bit of intense thought one day, he realised that it had to do with the whole Itch situation.

It was essentially her biggest weakness. Her deepest shame. And by offering to do something about it, and even sharing it with her… it had changed everything. He did not make fun of her for having it, or wanting something done about it, or _enjoying_ the result, and it seemed she really, really appreciated that.

It was an interesting activity that came about in interesting ways. Most of the time he could tell when she needed it, though she never directly told him; she would start to get a little more antsy, or caustic, or she would look at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention in a studious sort of way. When this happened he usually took his time about it, leading her into thinking he was going to do something about it and then doing nothing. He knew that frustrated her, and he would feel a bit bad for making a bad thing worse, but she pretended not to notice. It was a weird game, where he pretended not to notice she was itchy and she pretended she didn’t know that he knew, and neither of them really cared at the end because the reward was well worth the wait. Okay, sometimes she _did_ get a bit tetchy, tetchier than usual anyway, and he usually took that as a sign he was taking the teasing way too far. And he knew he was in the middle of taking it too far right then and there, but she really had no idea right now just how far he was planning on taking it…

Wheatley had decided to do a bit of an… experiment. One where he took things much, much farther than he should, just to see what she would do about it. Perhaps it was cruel. But it was also the best way to figure out just how secure his place in the facility was, because he sure as hell knew she wouldn’t tell him if he asked. So he was going to push her until he really felt he was in trouble, and then he’d give it to her.

She had all but given up on the subtle hints, which actually _were_ surprisingly subtle, since that wasn’t really her strong suit, but he knew her Itch was fast approaching unbearable. She was becoming increasingly confused and distracted, unable to hold a conversation more than five minutes long. She was having trouble sleeping as well, which he did feel a bit bad about, but she did not mention it so he supposed she had it under control for the most part. Wheatley knew he’d better get a move on the day she actually pulled her co-op bots from the middle of a test; now she was at the point where she couldn’t even _think_ about testing and what the end result entailed, when there were actually results that was. Apparently robot testing didn’t produce any. He did have to admire her fortitude, though. It was quite clear to him that she had it very, very bad, but she refused to actually lower herself to asking him to do something about it. If that wasn’t the mark of incredible, awe-inspiring willpower, he didn’t know what was.

He managed not to hint at what he was going to do, and waited until the last possible second when she got herself settled for sleep mode. Then he slipped underneath her with one of the lovely cleaning cloths and went right for her… well, her sweet spot.

She gasped and jerked violently, sounding extremely surprised, and he supressed a laugh. This was going to be fun.

“Hang on,” she told him in a somewhat choked voice, hauling herself up enough that she could look at him, and though he’d only touched her for a second she was already considerably worked up. “You just… tease me for _months_ , and now you’re just going to… be like that?”

“ _Tease_ you?” he asked with an innocent tilt of his core. “Does that sound like me?”

“ _Yes_.” Her optic flared, but if she was considering saying anything more he thoroughly halted it by running the cloth around inside of the hole. She let out a strangled noise and collapsed.

In accordance with his experiment, Wheatley took his time. He caressed the tiny lip of the hole with the cloth, as lightly as possible, and after a few seconds of this she groaned and tilted her core as far as possible towards him, though she of course couldn’t do so far enough to see him. “What the _hell_ are you – ahhhhahhh…”

He’d pressed a little bit harder just then, to gauge just how far along she was, and she seemed to be pretty damned far already. He shrugged to himself and went back to the light caressing. _He_ wasn’t ready yet, so he was going to take his time. He knew that was not nice at all, considering his Itch came and went and hers just grew over time, but something inside told him he had her completely under his control, and he might as well make use of it while he could.

“Wheatley, what… what are you _doing_ …”

“Cleaning,” he answered sweetly. “What’re _you_ doing?” Just to keep her from getting annoyed, he pressed a little bit harder, still going ‘round the hole in the same continuous sort of way. He’d get her used to the rhythm and then he’d have a little more fun.

“God, why is it _taking_ … gyahhhh… Oh God. Oh God, I can’t… this is… oh… nnnhhh…”

Her chassis flared with heat suddenly, the fans all over her body revving simultaneously, and in response to this Wheatley took the cloth out of the hole altogether, instead rubbing at the surrounding area in a very haphazard sort of way. She generated a garbled electronic noise in frustration as her chassis seized up violently.

“I hate you. I hate you and I’m going to kill you. I’m not kidding. You’re doing this on purpose and I’m _not_ going to stand for it. I’m – ack. Oh. Ahhahh. Nggghh. Oh God.”

He continued pushing the cloth carefully from the outside of the hole to the lip on the inside, never keeping it there and always pulling it out right away, with the barest pressure he could possibly give her and still be touching her at the same time. She moaned, a long, tortured and yet melodious sound, and pushed her chassis towards him, but he had anticipated that and did not allow her to receive the pressure she craved. She made another frustrated sound, which transformed into static when her chassis seized again.

“I think… that’s… that’s enough. You can’t… can’t keep doing… this.”

Wheatley’s only answer was to press a little harder.

“Ohhhh… nggh… oh my God… that’s better. That’s much… mm. Alright. Keep… doing that.”

He didn’t, of course, because as tingly and needy as his own chassis was getting, it still wasn’t quite there yet. He was overheating a little, but he wasn’t sure if that was a result of his Itch growing or the fact that GLaDOS was fast approaching critical temperatures. He knew he should care about that, knew he was risking damage to her components in exchange for his own pleasure, but he didn’t. Truth be told, he was far too pleased with just how much he was controlling her. She was helpless, and would be until he relinquished his hold. Which he was not going to do just yet.

He massaged the area around the hole very, very hard, and she gasped powerlessly and shuddered, so much so he had to stop because he couldn’t tell what he was touching. When she’d gone relatively still, he went back to the massaging, getting closer and closer to the inside lip. She twisted minutely in time with his movements, panting impressively and rocking slightly, and Wheatley’s Itch flared for a long moment. All he wanted to do just then was throw himself into her chassis and finish it, but he forced himself to be patient. All in good time.

“Mm… yes… yes… ohhhh… it’s almost… nnngh… I can almost… no, no, _no!_ ”

He’d gone back to caressing the case around the hole again, causing her to shake violently, and to his surprise she actually whined a little bit. It was quiet, and short-lived, but filled with frustration and pain. That threw him a little. He hadn’t realised it was actually _hurting_ her. That, he hadn’t meant.

“Stop it. I’m serious. Stop teasing me.”

“Just doing my best, luv.”

“You’re not! You’re just doing whatever the hell you want. I’m not some _apparatus_ you can fool around with. If you keep doing this, you are going to regret it.”

Fear jolted through his chassis. Alright, she seemed to actually be getting angry now. And the last thing he wanted to do was make her angry. But for some reason the fear died out rather quickly, replaced by the desire to push her even farther, to see if she’d make good on her threat. So he pushed what she’d said out of his mind and rubbed at the inside of the hole, hard. She cried out, chassis groaning in protest from the sudden clenching this brought on, and she shook her core and moaned in some tone that half suggested relief, half suggested he’d made things worse.

“Ohhhhhh… nggghhaaaah… God, what… oh… mmm… I can’t, I can’t… Wheatley… nnnnhhh…”

That was when he thought of something really nasty, something that would really, really push it, and though he knew it might be the last thing he ever did, he couldn’t help himself.

He put the cloth off to the side for the moment, moved just enough so that he could reach, and scraped the inside of the hole with the right corner of his upper handle. She whimpered, her chassis somehow spasming viciously, considering the clenched-up state she was currently occupying. “What the hell are you _doing_?”

He touched her again, just enough to make her moan and send anticipation coursing through his chassis, and he said in a low voice, “I want you to ask me.”

She shook her core, chassis heaving. “No.”

“Ask me, or you’re going to be stuck like this.” He gave the hole another scrape and she let out what was almost a wail, chassis straining against itself as she tightened even more. Heat was pouring down her chassis in waves, which was not pleasant even for him, and he wasn’t even occupying it. She must have been in horrible discomfort, not to mention considerable pain.

“No. I… I won’t.”

“Ask me and I will finish this. All you gotta do. Just ask. Not that hard.”

“I… will not,” she gasped, trembling uncontrollably, and he frowned. She was really willing to put herself through all of this? She wouldn’t just _ask_ and have him give her what she wanted? Why? What could possibly be a good enough reason _not_ to?

“You’re going to… regret this. I told you… and you will.”

He felt that pinprick in his brain from that one session, where she’d shared her experience with him in order to measure it, and he was almost knocked offline. He could feel every inch of her chassis now, every inch that burned with a throbbing, piercing ache, pain surging down it in time with the waves of heat. The hole in particular was almost unbearably painful, with an ache so deep and penetrating and tender that he clenched his optic closed in an attempt to fight it. It _hurt_ , it hurt more than anything he’d ever felt, more than being crushed, even, it hurt so much the word _pain_ was not enough to describe it. She was in anguish, and he’d been torturing her, plain and simple, and as it gave a particularly agonising throb of _need_ he cried out and clenched his chassis into itself.

“Now you see,” she told him, her voice low and indescribably strained. “Now you… you know what you’ve done.”

He tried to keep from trembling. “Just… just… ask, and I’ll… I’ll…”

“I will _not_ ,” she interrupted, her voice gaining a little strength. “You can… lead me on. You can… ngghh… torture me and you can… aghhnnn… leave me like this and… ack… walk away, but I will… _never_ beg. You will… ohhhhnnnnghh… _never_ see me beg.”

Wheatley managed to separate the plates of his optic, and when he’d done that he looked at her straining, aching chassis as she gasped and tried to push back the pain and the need, and decided she’d long since earned her reward. Though his connection to her made his own chassis ache, he made it up to the hole and inserted himself carefully, fully aware of just how the gentle scraping felt and just how _perfectly_ he fit in there, and she shuddered and moaned with pleasure.

“Yesssss… ohhhhh… God… mmmm… alright, that… keep… keep doing that… ohhhh…”

He moved inside of her, moving his chassis in a back-and-forth motion that relieved the ache quite nicely, and she sighed and shifted above him, rocking a little bit and thrusting up and down. The heat here was very, very intense, but though his internal systems were screaming warnings at him the euphoric response he was sharing with her was so strong that he couldn’t even begin to think about doing anything. She was just generating wave after wave of it, and it was so very powerful that he was hard-pressed to keep himself inside of her. She gasped and moaned with increasing intensity, and Wheatley was a little scared of just how strong it was going to be when she was finished, if it was this strong _now_. He really _had_ taken it too far. She began to shove down on him, hard, and as frightening as the thought of her finish was, he was far more panicked to think that he might be dislodged from her body. He thrust himself inside of her, needing that sense of wholeness and completion being inside of her brought, and she let out a beautiful gasping scream that made him relax so much he was touching every piece of that hole.

“Oh God… yes… oh, Wheatley… a little harder… come on… you owe me…”

He did, he thought dazedly, a lazy moan spilling out of him as the response increased by a degree, he really did owe her, but he was barely able to function. He expanded his chassis as much as he could, somehow finding it in him to shove up on her, and with a rapturous sigh she pushed back down.

“That’s… mmmm… _so_ much better… ohhhh my.”

Wheatley was beginning to have trouble keeping track of what was going on. She was overheating so much that his fans had shut off because they were wasting power, but all that did was make him want to thrust upwards even more. He was making her hot, because she wanted him, she wanted him to keep pushing himself into her, and ohhh God was it worth it, because with every push the most incredible feeling washed through his system and he groaned with the intense pleasure of it. If that hadn’t been enough, the sound of her beautiful voice moaning and gasping and sighing would have been, and he dazedly gave back to her what she gave to him as her thrusting became increasingly violent and powerful.

“Nnnghh… gahhahh… oh… yes… yes… _yes_ … mmmgh… oh – oh – oh – God, Wheatley… _yes_!”

She came down on him, hard, and he pressed up on her as hard as he could, touching every bit of the inside of that hole, and she screamed, her chassis coming up and arching towards the ceiling as she threw her core back. Oh God, the _pleasure_ , it just kept coming and coming, everything inside of him was on fire from it but thankfully the pain was gone, and there was just pleasure and pleasure and _more pleasure_ , and it was all he could do to keep from being knocked offline again. He was going to see this through, damn it, and as she let out a long, rapturous, “Ahhhhhhhh,” he almost didn’t make it, the euphoria was so intense. Her chassis was straining hard, curved towards the ceiling and shaking and shuddering from pressure it was not designed to sustain, but she did not stop, merely continued moaning uncontrollably as he pressed into her in an equally uncontrolled fashion. He couldn’t stop and she couldn’t stop, and just as the euphoria was starting to get a little less intense she cried out again and shook and it came crashing down on top of him so strongly that he let out a gasping scream and shoved up on her.

“Oh… oh… oh… ahh… mm… yes… Wheatley… Wheatley…”

“GL… GLaDOS,” he managed, his voice strained and small, and she responded to this by pushing down hard, so very hard that his chassis started to hurt, but all he could do was press upwards in answer. She sighed, a gentle, relieved sound, and loosened, lowering herself towards the floor. The euphoria did not stop even when her chassis began to creak as it cooled down, continuing to flutter through her massive body in delicious, tantalising waves, and with each one she sighed and rocked a little. It took a long time for it to fade, and when it did it merely settled at some dizzying level where he could think the tiniest bit, though not too hard and not about much. She generated a soft exhale and finally went still.

“That was… amazing,” she told him, her voice soft and airy, and if he’d been in any other state it would have sent a thrill through him. As it was all he could do was settle himself into the hole a little better. “I don’t forgive you for… what you did. But… thank you.”

“I’ll take the punishment in return for that any day,” Wheatley mumbled, and GLaDOS laughed lazily, her voice low and throaty and seductive.

“Very well. If that’s what you want.”

And he did.


	8. Chapter 8

Part Eight

 

But punishment didn’t come.

He waited for it. He spent the morning being as considerate and polite as possible, just in case he could dissuade her, but she did not so much as hint at it. She was quite obviously affected by the previous night’s happenings, her movements lethargic and her speech relaxed. She didn’t seem to be doing much of anything, either, instead sort of relishing whatever was left of yesterday’s rush, body fairly humming with contentment, and Wheatley soon let down his guard. After a while he leaned against her, a little nervously, but she said and did nothing. He managed to keep still and silent as she kept on whatever it was she was doing.

After a while, he started to get a bit jealous. The aftermath lasted so long for her. How fair was that? He did all the work and she got all the good stuff? Not fair at all! And here he was, with practically nothing.

Well. Not entirely true. He _was_ pretty damn itchy.

He sat in the doorway outside of her chamber, pressing up against the wall. It was times like these that her chassis absolutely drove him mad. All those tiny little parts, perfectly commanded by her to do whatever she wanted, in perfect, defined little movements. The long white curves of ceramic that gave a little more dimension to her shape, at once elegant and terrifying. The precision of the black wire curling all around her, somehow never getting in her way though it was visible in every inch of her, and that single threading orange one... He shuddered as the Itch flared up inside of him. He had no idea why staring at GLaDOS’s _very_ attractive chassis made him want to… well, to do that sex thing with her as fast as possible. He dared imagine for just a second how lovely it would feel, to press himself into that oh-so-perfect hole in her chassis, and found himself almost letting out a bit of a moan. That might’ve helped, if it hadn’t _also_ sent a massive aching wave down his chassis, and he had to clench himself together very tightly and pray that it would pass quickly. When it had died down to a more or less manageable level, he looked out into her chamber again.

She was swaying back and forth, very, very gently, almost as if being buffeted by a slight breeze. His fans sped up a little as his optic traced her miniscule path, hypnotised. God, she was so… _perfect_. He wasn’t sure how the world had packed so much perfection into one construct, but it had, and – dare he say it, even to himself? – she was all his.

Eventually he worked up the nerve to enter her chamber, hoping he wouldn’t terribly embarrass himself with his needing his Itch scratched, so to speak, but the way she turned to look at him was so smooth and languid that something inside of him stopped for a long second and all he could do was stare at her.

“Yes?” she asked, voice every bit as smooth and languid as her movement, and suddenly Wheatley realised that she probably already knew.

“Uh,” he stammered, not really sure what to do with his revelation. “’allo.”

She laughed, very softly, which did not help with the horrible tingling of the Itch buzzing just underneath his metal plating. “You didn’t have to sit out there, you know.”

“I uh… didn’t want to um… to bother you.”

She tilted her core in quite an endearing fashion, and he moved a little closer. Maybe if he got within range of the heat coming off her chassis, the Itch would fade… “If you bother me, I send you away. Isn’t that usually how it works?”

“Yeah… but um… I was just uh… just making sure, y’know, just being polite.” Just a little closer…

“That’s a first.” She swung away from him, and he unintentionally drooped in disappointment. “I didn’t know you had that word in your vocabulary.”

He swung back and forth a little, staring morosely at the floor. How was he supposed to get close if she already knew? She would take her time toying with him, he knew _that_ for damn certain.

“Did you really think,” she whispered suddenly into the side of his core, making him shiver with anticipation, “that you could stare at me for an entire afternoon and I wouldn’t notice?” The crackle of feedback generated by her speakers being too close to his microphones sent another flare of Itchiness through him, and he almost shuddered.

“Thought it uh… it might’ve been in the cards, yeah,” he answered weakly, watching as she pulled back far enough to look him face-to-face. She shook her core with an air of mock disapproval.

“I noticed. Hours and hours ago. I decided not to mention it. I decided to… think what to do about it, instead.”

“And… what did you… decide to do?” Hopefully his punishment wasn’t going to be _too_ horrid.

“Well,” she murmured, but did not continue. Instead she circled him, and he did his best to follow her without moving. The sleek, serpentine movement of her body around him, surrounding him, made the Itch surge once more, and he whimpered a little and closed his shutters. She laughed again, barely audible.

“You’ll have to wait and see. Won’t you.”

“Please,” Wheatley whispered, knowing that wasn’t going to help his case but being unable to stop himself, “please, I need you to… I _need_ it, GLaDOS, and I can’t _stand_ it anymore – “

“Sssh.” She nudged him gently, which both brought a little relief and made the situation worse. It sent an electric wave down his chassis, which somehow strengthened the Itch and made him whine a little once more. She hummed.

“It’s pretty bad, isn’t it,” she asked, her voice low and silky. God, she was doing everything possible to make all of this absolutely unbearable! “Makes you want to… do something pretty drastic.”

“Yes,” Wheatley whimpered. His optic was clamped tightly shut so that he wouldn’t be able to see her winding ‘round him, or swaying in that oddly natural way, or looking at him serenely… she gave him another nudge, softer this time, and he started to shake.

“You want me to get a move on, don’t you.” Another nudge, somehow even more soft and gentle than before. It felt good, though, like a little touch of release.

“Yes.”

“You want me to get right to it, don’t you.” Softer, again, so soft and gentle he barely felt it, but at the same time it sent his fans into overdrive.

“Y-yes.”

“It’s too bad that I won’t, though. That wouldn’t be very fun. For me. You’re going to have fun no matter what happens, so I don’t think you’ll mind if I fail to take you into account for a while.”

He both did and didn’t mind: on the one hand, he knew that drawing it out would make the reward so much better; but on the other, it was going to hurt a hell of a lot.

She began to nudge him at random intervals, sometimes very softly and sometimes very hard, and whenever he had the faculties to do so he returned them as best he could with his optic being closed. Each touch sent another bit of tingling crackling over him, and if he relaxed enough he could just feel a bit of euphoria winding between them, seeming to come to him directly via her core. It was such a small amount that he began to get impatient, and perhaps in response she began rubbing her core alongside his. It felt unbelievably good, as if his Itch was quite literally _being scratched_ , and he pressed himself into her, moaning and beginning to engage in simulated panting. He wasn’t sure why he was doing that, but it made everything feel so much more heightened, both his Itchiness and the little pieces of euphoria trickling into his system every now and again, so he made no attempt to stop it. GLaDOS’s voice came again, still low and sultrier than before.

“You like that, hm? Maybe I should stop.”

His answer was to press his chassis up her core, very hard, whimpering.

She pushed on him, and he pushed back as hard as he could, his fans quickening undeniably. She was just sending wave after wave of the near-euphoria through him, he was _so close_ to actually feeling it, and the only way was to keep getting her to press on him and ohhhh…

She was rubbing her core alongside his hull, very, very slowly, so slowly, and it was so horrible but so tantalisingly amazing at the same time. She was rubbing it, at first up and down but then moving around him to cover not quite all but most of him, and he was moaning and he badly wanted to say her name but he couldn’t make it come out, as he so often couldn’t in these situations. She continued caressing him with her core, increasing the pressure perfectly as if she’d been doing it all her life. He was helpless. It was all he could do to hang on as the Itch mounted, because the release he wanted was coming and he could not allow an overabundance of Itchiness steal that from him.

She drew her chassis around his, pressing her body into him from her core to the hinge, as far as he knew she could, and now he did find it in him to gasp, “GLaDOS,” and he did his best to look at her but he couldn’t focus his optic enough to do so. There was so much of her, and it was all around him surrounding him all at once, and that was how he _wanted_ it, he wanted to be surrounded by her and feel that euphoria with her forever, and when she came back around to do it again he pressed backwards, into her as hard as he could, whimpering in relief the entire time. Ohhh she was quite literally scratching his Itch, she was rubbing it right out of him, and it felt so damn good he didn’t know why he’d never thought of it before.

Somewhere behind him, GLaDOS made a bit of a surprised noise and pulled back a little. He followed helplessly, needing the heat from her body to surround him, and as soon as he did so he connected with what he knew for certain was her chestplate. She grunted and moved away again.

“That’s… unexpected,” she murmured. He had no idea what that meant, but she wasn’t going to get so close to solving his problem and then leave. He pushed backwards again, managing to find her chassis even though he still wasn’t looking, and she groaned a little, rubbing on top of him the slightest bit.

“Ohh. Alright.”

She began to move on top of him, pressing her chestplate into his chassis, and she was murmuring to herself and making quite a lot of quiet, excited noise. If he’d had the ability to laugh when her chassis flared with heat, he would have. Seemed GLaDOS had found another use for this activity. A… _personal_ use. But Wheatley honestly didn’t mind. All he cared about was that she kept pressing herself into him, because he was becoming quite heady with euphoria now and all he really wanted was for it to keep coming.

“Ohhh… my, this is… mmmm… I did not expect… nnnnggghh…” She rubbed harder, faster, and her ensuing moans only excited him more. He stayed as still as possible, not wanting to distract her and possibly make her stop, though it was quite hard. He managed it only by mentally chanting _GLaDOS… GLaDOS… GLaDOS…_ in time to his uncontrollable panting.

“Nnnnghhahhh… ohhh I… it can’t be this easy… mmhhhnnnn… alright… ohhhhh…” Her movement was now a constant back-and-forth motion, undeniable and powerful and oh-so-amazing, and with every second she kept on doing what she was doing the Itch faded and transformed into ecstasy. He prayed that she would not realise what she was doing and stop. Wheatley’s rather intimate knowledge of her chassis told him that she was covering the chestplate quite well, rubbing away at the front in particular and pressing those grooves into him as best she could. She seemed to be trying to keep quiet, as though she didn’t know he knew exactly what she was doing. To be honest her muted groans and simulated exhales where every bit as exciting as when she didn’t bother trying to hide it, and with every push she made he just felt better than he’d ever felt before. After a particularly hard shove she let out a relieved, yet pained moan and shifted. Wheatley knew exactly where she was going next and resolved more than ever not to move. The heat was pouring off her chassis now, their respective sets of fans whining in protest, but overheating was the last thing on Wheatley’s mind.

And then she was on top of him, pressing the hole in her chestplate on top of him with as much force as she could and rocking slowly back and forth, moaning and sighing and breathlessly murmuring to herself. He almost completely stopped thinking then, nearly overtaken by the rush of bliss pouring directly out of her and into him. “ …ohhhhh God… oh… oh… nnngh… ahhhh… yes, this is… mmm…”

She pressed down hard, riding on top of him as if he were never going to move again, and he was a little shocked and panicked when he realised she had slowed down a little. “Here,” she gasped, voice barely more than an uncontrolled whisper, “it’s… God, you have to… share this with me…nnnnghh…”

If he’d thought he’d been euphoric before…

She had again opened the connection between them, but it seemed so much deeper than before. He could almost feel the inside of her brain, and the natural way the euphoria spread inside of it and smoothed out her thoughts. It was so freeing and so blissful that he completely understood why doing things like this always hit her so hard. She resumed her almost frenzied rocking, and with each push there was such a powerful wave of euphoria that Wheatley couldn’t keep quiet any longer. He did not move, because he did not know what he wanted and she did, she knew and she kept giving it to herself and it felt so incredible he never wanted her to stop. He moaned and cried out her name, screaming out “ _GLaDOS… luv, oh God,_ ” without really meaning to, and she _pressed_ down hard and sighed “ _Wheatley_ …”

It was the most incredible feeling in the world, to have that horrible Itch inside of the hole literally scratched, and she did so as thoroughly as possible, every particularly relieving rub causing her to moan in an almost delirious way. She shifted a little, pulling over top of him with a delicious slowness, and as she sighed in relief he felt her moving back, and he imagined her arching her chassis hard, using him as a sort of pivot point. This thought alone blanked out his mind with the amount of euphoria it created. God, it was incredible, just knowing what he caused her to do and feel. It was the most incredible feeling in the world.

She continued to rock on top of him for quite a while, the feeling doing it brought never diminishing, until eventually he felt something inside of her brain relax as her chassis began to cool. She went mostly still, pulling forward or back on top of him now and again to relieve a little bit of an ache that would crop up inside of her, a little sigh escaping her as she did so. They sent shivers going inside of him, and he just sat there quiet and still, willing her to do whatever she needed to do. Her body was just a wonder, it was, filled with so many sensations and so much power and yes, even beauty, that he was willing to sit there inside of it for a good long time. Long after her fans had quieted and her occasional movements had failed to bring any sort of _reaction_ she continued to rest on top of him, and he was perfectly happy to stay there and leave it that way. After a long, long time she slowly lifted herself off of him, and he opened his shutters finally to see her stretching contentedly, chassis rippling in a languid sort of way. She took her time, which he appreciated, and when she was done she turned to face him.

“I didn’t expect that to happen,” she told him, sounding tired but extremely satisfied. “I thought… well, I didn’t know that would bring anything about on my end.”

He smiled at her. “I’m glad it did.” She shook her core.

“It… felt really good, but… was so odd at the same time.”

“I had fun. _Looked_ like you did.” He smiled in what he hoped was a mischievous way. “Did you?”

She laughed and rubbed her optic assembly into his chassis, and he was surprised to discover it felt quite affectionate. He was still somewhat connected to her and he was getting a general impression of how she felt, which was… just really, really happy. And a bit surprised. And maybe….

Maybe even a little grateful.

He made a spilt-second decision to rub her back before she got too far away, the exact same way with his optic buried in her core, and she made a lovely cooing noise, pressing on him in quite an adorable fashion. For a time they continued the unusual motions, playful sort of head-butting being the best way to describe it, and it ended with Wheatley nestled quite contentedly against her core. It was a little cooler than usual, but that was all fine with him. He’d gotten a bit hot and excited with the whole nudging thing, not because he’d wanted to or anything, but because she was so rarely playful. “Hey,” he whispered, after a few minutes of silence.

“Mm.”

“I know you said uh, said that felt odd, but uh… if you wanted to um, to do it again sometime, that’d be, um, be alright with me.”

“I think,” she answered thoughtfully, still sounding tired, “it would be alright with me as well.”

That thought kept Wheatley awake far longer than it should have.


	9. Chapter 9

Part Nine

 

Wheatley’s chassis ached.

It wasn’t the first time it’d done that. It wasn’t the second, nor the third, but the _seventh day_ , and the pain was showing no signs of letting up. Wheatley was getting quite angry and resentful about this. GLaDOS got her euphoria _again_ and yes, Wheatley had gotten it too, but it wasn’t worth a whole week of pain! And she just kept on as if everything was normal, which it _wasn’t_. It’d been fun, yeah, but God GLaDOS was heavy. He’d obviously noticed her size, but he hadn’t realised she was so _heavy_ , and even moreso when she was pushing down on him! And she’d been _sitting_ on him… Wheatley shuddered as his chassis ached a little more strongly. Great. Now just _thinking_ about it hurt.

“All right,” GLaDOS announced, turning ‘round to look at him and tilting her core inquiringly. “You’ve been sulking for an entire week. What did I supposedly do now?”

Wheatley glared up at her.

“No, seriously. I spent all yesterday trying to figure it out. It galls me even to _admit_ I can’t figure out what it is. So just tell me and we both win.”

“You don’t even notice,” Wheatley mumbled resentfully, turning away from her. She _never_ noticed.

“Notice what? Did you do something I failed to appreciate? Not that I’m going to appreciate it if you _do_ tell me. But there’s no chance of appreciation at all if you don’t tell me what it is.”

“My chassis hurts,” he told her petulantly. She shook her core exasperatedly and pulled away.

“What does that have to do with me? I really do not understand you sometimes…”

“You’re bloody heavy, that’s what it has to do with you!” Wheatley shouted at her, hull plates clenching together. “And what happens when a heavy person starts having a go on top of somebody else? That’s right! They feel even _heavier_!”

GLaDOS stared at him for a good fifteen seconds.

“I can’t do anything about that,” she told him quietly, and if he hadn’t known any better he’d’ve thought he heard a trace of hurt in her words. “And you didn’t say anything at the time. So how was I supposed to know?”

“You’re supposed to be bloody brilliant, remember?” He was being so sarcastic it was an understatement to call it sarcasm. “Shouldn’t you have been able to puzzle that one out?”

Again she looked at him without saying anything. Finally she shook her core again and turned away.

“So that’s that?” Wheatley demanded moving ‘round in front of her. “You’re just gonna, gonna, that news doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“There’s nothing I can do about it. You’re blaming me for something that’s not my fault. You weren’t complaining then so you shouldn’t complain now.”

“This is why you have no friends,” Wheatley muttered, turning to leave. “You never take responsibility for anything.”

“I have friends,” GLaDOS protested. Wheatley laughed.

“No you don’t.”

“I _do_ have friends. Just because you’ve never met them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“If they existed, I’d’ve met them by now,” Wheatley sneered.

“I don’t like making myself available, that’s all. If they were allowed into the facility all the time, I’d never hear the end of it.”

Wheatley shook his core and left her chamber. He had no idea why she was bothering to lie. Okay, yes, she was beautiful and clever and extremely witty when she wanted to be, but she was also very, very hard to get along with. She couldn’t possibly have friends. She was far too volatile for most people to put up with her.

Wheatley fumed for much the rest of the day. She was seriously a pain sometimes. Really, pretending she had _friends_. As if.

That was why Wheatley actually stopped responding when he returned to her chamber for the night. He was stuck there, frozen, gaping at GLaDOS and… and her _friend_.

He’d never seen anything like… him? The robot seemed to have male programming, if its loud, processed voice was anything to go by. Other than that, Wheatley wasn’t sure how to tell. It was nothing like any other robot he’d ever seen. He was sort of rectangular, but his chassis narrowed a little, so that he was wider on top than he was on the bottom. He wasn’t on a management rail or anything either, instead balanced on one heavily toothed wheel.

What a ridiculous construct. Not only that, but he was quite filthy! Almost as though he went mucking about on the surface! “GLaDOS,” he called out cautiously, leaning forward, “um… who is this?”

They looked over at him, the mysterious robot zooming in on him a little with a strange, telescoping blue-green optic. GLaDOS shrugged. “A friend,” she answered with disturbingly sincere nonchalance. “He’s not here because of that… discussion, by the way. He just comes by now and then to…” She tilted her core a little, dimming her optic in consideration.

“Get some action!” the robot declared, throwing one spindly arm around her neck assembly.   Wheatley felt something sink inside him, though he had no clue what it was.

“Get… some action?” he repeated weakly. The robot tapped GLaDOS’s assembly a few times.

“There’re lots of babes on Pandora, of course, but GLaDOS here… well, she’s got that something special, I’ll tell ya! Hey… who are you, anyway? She never mentioned you…”

“I’m Wheatley,” answered Wheatley, frowning down at GLaDOS. She didn’t seem to care, though, instead staring thoughtfully at the wall with her core slightly tilted towards the robot. “I’m her friend. Who lives with her. And talks to her. Every day.”

The robot waved. “Claptrap. I’m just here to borrow GLaDOS for a while. Be on my way after that.”

“I’m not _beholden_ to him,” GLaDOS snapped, moving away from Claptrap’s arm. “He’s stuck here. So I’m stuck with him. That’s all.”

“Oh, I feel you, baby.” Claptrap rubbed one paddle-like hand up the side of her core. “It sucks when your sidekick is super lame, right? I mean, look at that guy! He’s so… _boring!_ Designers couldn’t think of a better shape than a _ball_? A _triangle_ -shaped robot, now _there’s_ something I could get behind!”

“Perhaps they were thinking with their nether regions, as humans so often do,” GLaDOS remarked dryly, glancing at Wheatley. Wheatley was becoming hurt and angry. Why was she joining in on that? Shouldn’t she be defending him? She was just going to sit there and compare him to… to… whatever it was they were talking about?

Claptrap laughed. “Sounds about right. Do you need him to leave or can we get started? I’ve been waiting _forever_!”

“Nothing’s going to happen that he hasn’t already seen,” GLaDOS answered, lowering herself to the floor. “If he doesn’t like it, he can go.”

“I don’t care if you stay, pal,” Claptrap called over, and from a compartment in his chassis came a long cable of a sort Wheatley had never seen before. “And hey! Maybe you’ll learn something.” After unravelling the cord, the robot extended his arm to a length Wheatley wouldn’t have thought possible, plugging it into some hidden port on GLaDOS’s chassis. Wheatley had no experience with those sorts of things and found himself asking helplessly, “What… what is that, that thing you just plugged in, there?”

“HDMI cable,” Claptrap answered. “It allows the transfer of high resolution images!”

“ _Images_?” Wheatley repeated. What did _images_ have to do with anything?

GLaDOS laughed softly. “He doesn’t know about that.”

“Reeeallly,” Claptrap said in a low voice, again leaning on GLaDOS’s neck assembly and pressing his chassis into the side of her core. “Then how did you – “

“That’s not important right now,” GLaDOS interrupted. “You can’t do it so there’s no point in elaborating.”

The robot put up his hands, the flap above his optic twitching. “Alright babe. You can keep your secrets. But let me show you what I’ve got.”

“That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

Abruptly GLaDOS lifted a little, stiffening and directing her optic upwards, as though she were looking at something. Wheatley glanced over at the wall, but saw nothing. He returned to watching her, a bit concerned with her odd behaviour. Claptrap was out of sight on the far side of her core, though Wheatley could see that he was rhythmically rubbing one of GLaDOS’s pistons with his flat little hand. She relaxed a little and shifted forwards. To his horror he heard her fans begin to pick up speed.

So they really were just… getting right to it. With him in the room. Watching them.

He wasn’t sure he’d like it if someone were watching _him_. Well. He wouldn’t notice, so he wouldn’t really care, would he? And… and besides. If he hung around, then _maybe_ he could get the euphoria _without_ actually doing anything! He wasn’t sure how that was going to come about, but as long as GLaDOS followed her usual way of doing things he was bound to get somewhere. Neither of them were going to notice him. So he may as well make use of it… right?

Whatever was going on with that cable, Wheatley didn’t know, but GLaDOS seemed to like it rather a lot. She was rocking back and forth a little bit, her optic looking unfocused. Claptrap had his arm clamped all the way around her core and was moving with her, his own optic extended and being used to brace himself against the back of her head. She shuddered.

“That is impressive. Mmmm… I didn’t think you’d… ah… you’d get there anytime soon.”

“Murphy’s Law,” Claptrap said, sounding a little breathless. Wheatley was feeling a little breathless himself, which was simply baffling considering none of them needed to breathe! It was so odd, how humans insisted on giving robots their mannerisms… “I would have thought you’d have something along these lines.”

“Who says I don’t?” GLaDOS answered, her voice low and smoky. Immediately Wheatley felt a bit dizzy and heat flared up from deep inside of him. He didn’t even know what they were talking about, but that tone of voice alone was just…

“Show me,” Claptrap demanded, tapping the top of the piston he was hanging onto with the top half of his hand. “This, I gotta see.”

She must have shown it to him, because all of a sudden she jolted, gasping, as Claptrap grunted and resumed his gripping of her piston. GLaDOS shifted her core into his chassis, rubbing against it slowly but by the looks of it, very hard.

“Hnnnnh… show me that… that one, again, the… mmm… oh, you know, the – yes. Ohhh God.”

“I haven’t even gotten to the good part,” Claptrap murmured, and Wheatley couldn’t really see what he was doing but GLaDOS actually perked up, moving out of his grip to look at him.

“You found more? Really?”

“Yes,” Claptrap answered, sounding a little too smug for Wheatley’s taste.   “Wanna see them?”

“No, I want you to delete them,” GLaDOS snapped, shaking her core. “Why do you always ask me those stupid – ohhhhh. That. That is – mmm.” She resumed rubbing against the robot’s oddly shaped body, which made Wheatley a little jealous and a little Itchy at the same time. It wasn’t fair that grubby robot got the pleasure of being touched by her beautiful chassis! She was supposed to be _his_ , for the love of Science, and she was doing _that_ against _him_ … Wheatley whimpered a little, imagining the hot, rough pressing of her body against his, and he started to wish he’d left the room. He hadn’t realised all of this would make him super Itchy and bring no euphoria at all. Across the room, GLaDOS sighed and pressed harder against Claptrap.

“… okay, credit is… nggh… due, you _do_ remember these things… ohhh. That is… I thought Pandora was… hnnn… devastated, where did you… did you get these?”

“I have my sources,” Claptrap answered, his voice strained. “Not gonna… oof… spill ‘em.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS gasped, sounding a little desperate now. “Oh my God… Claptrap…”

“Yessss,” the foreign robot hissed, and from what Wheatley could see he was rubbing against her core just as she was putting the pressure on his chassis. Her body tightened, causing a similar reaction in Wheatley, who was now terribly confused about what he was supposed to do. He should leave even now but she was making that _noise_ …

“…nngh… oh… hey, could you… do something for me?... ahh… see that hole, down there?... could you just… mm… stick your hand in there? That would… hnnn… be very helpful.”

“Right here?” Claptrap asked, extending his arm and shoving it inside the hole, and GLaDOS made an irritated, pained noise and shoved him away from her.

“No, you idiot! Don’t _poke_ me. You just have to touch it, not _stab_ … mmm.” She relaxed for a few seconds, then hitched backwards as her chassis tightened again. “… that’s what I meant. Ohhh… just keep doing that, will you… ahhhh…”

It was killing him, it really was, watching her shove up against that stupid foreign robot, making _him_ moan and scratching _his_ Itch and doing all that lovely stuff for _him_ , when Wheatley was the one who tried to help her out all the time! And darn darn darn now he was so Itchy he just wanted to shove Claptrap’s stupid hand out of the way and get in there himself!

GLaDOS’s core was tilted towards the ceiling now, and she was rocking back and forth, hard. She was panting a little, moaning now and then as Claptrap got a particularly good rub in, and when she did that Wheatley could just see Claptrap’s grip tightening inside of her chassis. He was making noise too, instead of staying quiet so he could listen to GLaDOS, and honestly Wheatley was starting to get really pissed off. This guy had no idea what he was doing. Wheatley did a _much_ better job, and not only that, but he took her into account! This guy… man alive, did he suck at this. Was GLaDOS trying to make a point, or something? That she could get her euphoria from anyone she wanted, and not have to get Wheatley to give it to her? Somehow able to put the Itch aside for the moment, he frowned down at her straining chassis, suddenly realising: she was getting desperate.

He looked her up and down, taking in her overworked fans, over-tightened body, and her increasingly frantic gasping, and decided he was going to have to do something. He had no idea what, but this Clap guy was not doing the job properly. He was taking her too far, he was pushing her too hard, and he was just going to end up leaving her tingly and needy and anxious. And _he_ was supposed to be the idiot!

“Claptrap,” GLaDOS said, her voice faint and wavery, “what are you _doing_? Nnnggh…”

“It must be your tolerance, babe,” Claptrap answered, sounding like he had gotten a pretty good dose of euphoria already.

“N-no… it’s… ngh… damn it…”

 _You’re going too far!_ Wheatley mentally screamed at him. _You have to bloody finish!_ But of course Claptrap didn’t hear him, just kept on rubbing against her core and bracing himself inside of –

He was _leaning_ on that hole in her chassis! What did he think she was, some sort of support strut? Wheatley had had enough. He closed the space between himself and the two of them, knocking Claptrap’s hand out of the way when he got there with a smack from his lower handle, and promptly inserted himself into the vacant space. GLaDOS seized, gasping in what seemed to be shock, and Wheatley pressed himself into her as hard as he could, aching chassis be damned. She needed something that only Wheatley knew how to provide, and he was going to provide it no matter what the consequences.

For a few seconds there was almost total silence; all Wheatley could hear was the whirring of all the various mechanisms the three of them were using. Then GLaDOS moaned, a long, delicious, wavering noise that flooded Wheatley with euphoria. He’d done it again. He might not be too great at a lot of things, but making GLaDOS feel good? Now _that_ was something he could do. And do a hell of a lot better than anyone else, even when they had _arms_.

“Oh, Wheatley,” GLaDOS groaned, her voice thick with relief. “Who knew. Mmm… God. Yes. Ahhh… leave me alone, Claptrap, ngghh… you… had your chance.”

“Oh, come on!” Claptrap shouted, and Wheatley would have been looking at him with an indignant look on her behalf if he could’ve. “I’m the one who – “

“- mucked ev’rything up!” Wheatley shouted back. “D’you even, d’you even know what you’re doing, mate? Or d’you just uh, you just get your kicks and then go on your way?”

“Whatever,” the other robot mumbled, and Wheatley hoped the whirring noises he was hearing were those of his exit. He waited a few more moments, just in case, and then pushed upwards again, grinding against her, hard. She moaned again, slowly lowering her core, shuddering.

“Wheatley… ahh… I know you don’t… _owe_ me anything, but… ngghhh… he was _pinching_ that spot and I… ohhh… I just need to – “

“Go on, luv,” Wheatley interrupted, not really caring what she did as long as she kept on making lovely noise. She shifted forwards, rubbing at the mentioned spot as best she could, panting in relief tinged with pain. When she moved back he did his best to get it for her, which caused her to moan deliriously and lower herself to the ground. He stayed settled inside of her, still feeling pretty good about himself, as she gently swayed back and forth, just a little.

After a long, comfortable silence, GLaDOS murmured, “Thank you.”

A warm, fuzzy feeling fell over Wheatley, something almost better than the euphoria. He didn’t think he’d heard more genuine gratitude out of her in his life. “You’re welcome, luv,” he answered, struggling to contain his excitement. “You could’ve um, could’ve asked, if you’d wanted.”

“I thought you’d be angry.”

And he had been, he had to admit. Angry, and hurt, and even a little humiliated, if he thought about it. But the day he understood GLaDOS would probably be the day he died, so… as long as things worked out, why mope over them? “I was, but um… didn’t, didn’t last, obviously.”

Another silence fell over them, and Wheatley closed his shutters and just enjoyed the sensation of her gentle heat flowing over him, of the wholeness he felt sitting inside of her. “Wheatley.”

God, he could feel the vibrations of her voice coming down her chassis… “Yeah?”

“I…” She paused. “Well… I’m… sorry.”

Wheatley froze.

“I… was being honest when I said that I didn’t ask him to come. But what I did… was wrong. I knew it would bother you and I did it anyway. And then you… fixed the problem he created, and –“

“It’s okay,” he interrupted, getting a little worried. He was pretty sure the euphoria had something to do with this sudden speech, and he didn’t want her to say anything she would regret later. “I just… didn’t like seeing him uh, mucking about without caring about – “

“That’s the _point_ ,” she insisted, twitching, and if he’d not been inside of her she’d probably have swung ‘round to look at him insistently by now. “Even though I was in the wrong, you did something about the problem anyway. When you should have just gone on your way and let it happen. Because let’s face it. I deserved it.”

“No one deserves to be treated badly.”

GLaDOS sighed.

“Are you _trying_ to make me feel worse? I’m pretty sure apologies are supposed to _improve_ things.”

“Not trying to do that,” Wheatley answered, and though he really liked his place up in her body he figured he wouldn’t have to argue with her as long if he settled next to her instead. Once he’d nestled himself against her core, he went on, “I did get pretty mad, though. He was worse than me! ‘magine that, that someone’s worse than me at something. Livid! Never thought I’d see the day.”

GLaDOS laughed, her voice low and gentle. “A miracle to be sure.”

Taking his chances, Wheatley decided to ask, “So uh… what was he showing you?”

“Oh…” GLaDOS didn’t sound very enthusiastic about revealing the answer. “Just some… things.”

“Like what?”

“Just… computer parts.”

“Computer parts?”

She huffed indignantly. “Fine. If you must know, sometimes I… become aroused when looking at computer parts. They have different technology where he comes from. I like looking at it. That’s all.”

He decided it was okay with him. After all, she was pretty much a bundle of computer parts and _he_ became… what word had she used… ah, _aroused_ when he was looking at her sometimes. “Alright.”

“You don’t think that’s… odd?”

He shrugged. “What’d be the point?”

“I… don’t know. But sometimes just _thinking_ of all the power they contain, it… and they just keep getting smaller…” She emulated an exhale. “God.”

And while the next three hours in which she somewhat dazedly extolled to him all the virtues of RAM, DRAM in particular (though she was developing a strong interest in ZRAM, apparently) were not that personally arousing for Wheatley, they sure were interesting.


End file.
